Recent content by bhm

Well, it does have the rare "rotor on the bottom" configuration.

This one just posted has both a 'rutter' and a 'rotor' -- just to be safe, I guess. Full text: Old sunfish sailboat with original dagger board and Rutter. Extra dagger board included an extra wave guard. Sale is usable but could use some patching. Complete with maybe one piece missing to hold...

I don't have a micrometer, but I do have a new mast base cap and a set of drill bits. My eye says that the pins are the same diameter as my 5/64 inch drill bit (on the left), and smaller than my 3/32 drill bit (on the right).

It works!! I test-sailed this prototype for a couple of hours, circa 5-7 pm yesterday, at speeds up to 4 mph in wind up to 8 mph, but no waves since this was a small flat shallow lake where I test new rigs. The final test version used white nylon twine instead of woven rope, since it doesn't...

I thought "Laser falling down mountain" was going to be the first line of a Haiku!

OK thanks. So if I follow this, that essentially was a way of turning your Grumman rope steering back into something like the standard steering system for a Sunfish or Sailfish, i.e. a sternpost rudder with a two-part forward-extending tiller that the helmsman controls by reaching aft to hold...

Why? (a) Mast is more nearly vertical, hence easier for it to turn. This pennant is tied to the fishing rod, so the whole rod has to turn in its socket with the wind; this would be harder to do if the socket was not vertical. Also, since it's just sitting in the socket by gravity, it would...

I don't get this. Is this tiller in front of you, like I am trying to do, or behind you, like a conventional rudder? Or is the U-shaped tiller a really big U, that has long arms that extend around your whole body? If so, is the bottom of the U in front of you or behind you? Also, what didn't...

An issue with just clamping the line is that I also want eventually to be able to clip and unclip the steering lines from the rudder when I dismount it, while keeping the lines at their intended optimal length, i.e. without untying anything. For now I've just shifted over to loops of heavy...

Thanks for your input. Yes, I totally agree about the end-grain eyelets; I just put them in that way when I first had the idea and wanted to test the geometry, to get a sense of what lengths for the two rocker bars and the front tiller would give a reasonable range of rudder motion, without...

I put a double-wide bench seat on my 1962 Super Sailfish Mk2 so I can hike out a bit by sliding over, while still having back support and a footrest. But this made it more difficult to hold the tiller behind the seat. Alan Glos suggested trying rope steering, as in many sailing canoes like the...

So, what is the smallest serial number yet known to have been stamped on the rudder mount or marked on the hull somewhere? Is this rudder mount with '677' a candidate for being the smallest number yet seen, whatever year of manufacture it may come from?

Can you post a picture of the rudder mount showing the '677' stamped on it? If I'm following what Signal Charlie just posted, I'm thinking that this might be a significant early landmark in Alcort industrial archaeology, proving that some kind of numbers were indeed stamped into some of the...

I couldn't find any precise numbers on-line, so here are mine. With the set-up shown above (3.5 inch 47 CFM muffin fan masked by its box and blowing continuously through a single midships 4-inch port, exiting through the 1/2-inch drain in the bow plus the two 1/4-inch holes in the stern), I...

You may mean the 'Sunfish timeline' document. I believe that includes all of the Alcort products, including the Sailfish, and that the serial numbers are unique, i.e. all the Alcort boats that have a serial number at all are in a single numerical order by serial number regardless of which type...