maden voyage

[preston]

well today it finally came together. my 1 year long refurbishing of a 74 alcort finally paid off. man i have never sailed a fish before and it was beyond my expectations. i truley have been bit by the sail bug. the boat worked great and one fellow at the boat ramp actually thought it was a new boat.

i do have a few questions that came to me on the water.

1. where on the upper boom should i tie off the halyard? and what type knot should be used for the connection.

2. where should i position the gooseneck on lower boom?

3. how far from the top of the deck to the gooseneck position?

where is the best place to seat when solo or with 2 people?

thanks for all your help.

preston

 

[imported_bernie]

Hey, Preston,
To answer some of your questions you might go to sunfishclass.org.
Look under Tips and Tricks and then under Sunfish Tuning Guide. It gives a pretty good explanation of adjustments for gooseneck etc. In regards to the sailing bug, I can relate. A friend gave my brother a Sunfish that needed repair 3 years ago. We have both been involved in building sailboats. But had never owned one. We did the repairs and started sailing aound Cape Cod area. We now have 6 Sunfish and 2 Scorpions (Sunfish knock off). I know, why do you need 8 boats? I'm not sure.
Use a clove hitch knot to tie off your Halyard. If you read thru the article it explains where to tie off. In general for recreation people tend to tie off the halyard so the can see better, and lower gooseneck postion for racing.
good luck with your sailing
Bernie

 

[preston]

thanks bernie for the tip. now i need to learn how to tie a clove hitch. yomentioned a scorpion , i too have one that was recently given to me in dirty but good shape. it is missing a rudder assembly and daggerboard. are you running the original scorpion system or have you switched out to fish fittings? my scorpion seems a little heavier than the fish. also can you tell much difference in the way the two sail? thanks

 

[imported_bernie]

Hey Preston,
so you have a scorpion and a sunfish? Be careful you could end up with a fleet like we did. The 2 scorpions that we have came from a camp. They were given to us. I had to re-rivet the deck of one of them and clean. I want to change the rudders systems but probably won't until next year. This winter I made 14 rudders and 13 centerboards out of mahogony they are sunfish style. 2 Old style sunfish and the rest are kick -up type. I want to change the 2 sunfish with the old style rudder system to kick-up type but, might not get to it this season. I don't know if you've seen the scorpion rudder setup, but to me it is kind of chunky compared to sunfish. Handles ok. I'm redoing the rudders on the scorpions. The boats handle very similar.
I haven't sailed the scorpions to often, I have my favorites as far as sunfish.
Bernie

 

[preston]

i am sticking with the original. i love it and will be scouting out backyards for sleeper deals all around georgia. we have a bunch of lakes down here and all the lake houses usually have a fleet of old boats laying around. it seems like the real find is getting one with all the components. the one i have restored was half swamped behind my neighbors house. i am giving the scorpion to a friend to play around with. if you want to sell the rudder system and daggerboard he would probably be interested if cheap. thanks