145 pounds!

[tag]

Yesterday, I rigged up a block and tackle system (4:1 mechanical advantage) and used it to lower my Sunfish out of the 2nd story of my dad's barn - it worked like a charm, and was much easier than getting it up there last fall. I had cut in 2 inspection ports, and found the hull had some water in it, and the foam blocks were soaking wet. I stupidly didn't think to weigh it then, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had been over 200 pounds... she was a beast - maybe even pushing 19 stone (ie Whole Lotta Rosie)!

I had a small fan running on it most of the last 2 or 3 months, but no other heat source... I was quite happy to see that when I tipped her up on the side tonight and weighed it - she is now only 145 pounds.

Per the Weight Chart (over at the Yahoo Sunfish Group), for my age of boat (mid 1960's), the hull weight should be 139 pounds, so only 6 pounds overweight. Not bad at all!

I still need to do a leak test and sort all of that out, but I am pretty happy with my drying results.

cheers,
tag (my2fish)

 

[winever]

Good job, thanks for posting the pix. Not sure i understand everything I see there, Winever.

 

[tag]

Good job, thanks for posting the pix. Not sure i understand everything I see there, Winever.

Um, I'll try to explain. I just used a 100-ft rope to hang the boat from the barn's rafters. I wanted to dry it out over the winter, but since I live about an hour away from my folks, I didn't want to use a light bulb or other heat source, and would have to rely on just a fan.

I couldn't find a small fan to mount directly on/over one of the ports, but did find the window unit style fan on a super discount sale (maybe $10). I set up the fan inside the cockpit, and used the box the fan came in to do my best (in a quick and dirty fashion) to block off the rest of the cockpit. The box is probably the confusing part - I just wanted something to cover the rest of the cockpit off to focus airflow through the ports.

I turned the fan on to pull air into the port mounted on the deck (you can see the port up near the coaming/splashguard in my 1st picture), through the innards of the boat, through the port mounted on the back wall of the cockpit (see picture below), and into the cockpit.

 

[winever]

Thanks Tag, now I see what I'm looking at. I want to do mine too, this is a good start at figuring it out, thanks, Winever.

 

[tag]

this is my setup I'm going to use in the backyard - Sunfish hull up on the sawhorses, and will probably add some black plastic bags or tarp over the hull to warm it up even more. my wife brought me home this nice little fan from a coworker. I used the spring clip with the fan, and just clipped it on the bailer head, and directed the flow right into the port in the back wall of my cockpit. I can feel air then blowing out the port on the deck. I might try to fiddle with it to clip the fan on the cockpit edge lip instead of the bailer.

I then proceeded to take it all down and move it back into the garage - we've got some rain coming and will be out and about over the long weekend so I didn't want to leave it outside. I have the fan running on it in the garage, though, and I'll set it back up outside next week to dry her out more and more.

see the attached pics.

cheers,
tag