Building the Skoota Coach Launch

Glassed, assembled, and we recruited about 6 folks from the shop to get it down the loading dock and onto the trailer.  The bench and battery box are mounted on T-track that's screwed to the deck.  You can see the microballoon 'schmeer' on the hulls, but it fairs up so quickly when sanding.  The deck cleats are positioned as far forward from the access cover as I could stick my arm in to reach the backing nuts.  You can see the tumblehome on the bow and shear line here.  I'm really glad we took the time and effort to add this detail. The console is okume with walnut trim.  View from the rear.  It looks slightly distorted perspective.  The motor mount is a stock Garelick, modified to lower it a couple of inches.  The rails are off the old launch  I'm really terrible about getting pictures made.  I haven't made the leap to the full instagram generation, but here it is on the water, first day 18, Sept 2019 It floated on its lines, and has ab

Our old boat acquired the name 'Murphy' shortly after acquiring it (it's predecessor was 'Fred').   Last year, we knew Murphy was on life support.  The deck was about to collapse, and with a 100lb of lithium battery and a coach on it, that's not a good thing. This spring, when we realized that the Skoota would not be ready, we threw together a temporary deck out of 3/4" underlayment and a couple of 2x4s.  Slap the old console on, the battery box, and a cooler for a seat and it worked ok to get thru the summer.  And just for fun, I ran some data points. Watts   KpH 1044    9.6 2017    11.4 3720    13.5

It's been entirely too long since the last post, and much has happened along the way.  The boat is basically finished and put away for the winter.  For those not from the upper midwest, the lake is now 6 or 8" thick and will remain so until March (or April). So for now, I'll try to do some catch-up, trying to remember as many of the horror stories as possible! The last set of photos had the deck sitting in between the hulls, but nothing attached.  A couple of days later, we got back from regatta and started final assembly. After a lot of head scratching, I went of a fairly brute force approach to mating the deck and hull.  The photo on the right shows a 5/8" stainless bolt and 1" aluminum bar, tapped and designed to mount 'blind'.  In hindsight, I underestimated the difficulty of getting the darn things lined up and threads started.  This will get modified in the spring to have access hatches in the deck, and at whatever point the billets strip out,

I've been remiss in posting *anything* about anything for the past couple of weeks.  It's summertime, the team is busy, and I'm burning the candle at both ends (and sometimes in the middle too). Since the last post, we've taken a couple of steps backwards, a couple sideways, and several steps forward.  First the good: We've got a boat, mostly.  Another 20 hours of work on hulls, finish the deck, and build a little deck furniture to get us through this year.  This week has been devoted to getting the deck aligned, the boat square, and bolt holes bored to secure the deck to the hulls.  Next up is to seal up the hulls, glass the top and a few other reinforcements, and add some final reinforcements to the deck before doing the same with it. The bad... The deck was a total and nearly disaster.  Initially, I went with lots of thin ribs, inlet panels to reinforce the structure, and had a great plan to epoxy it all together and it would magically be light

Not sure who else could've done it.  I got to the shop this evening, and found the strongback gone, and the hull sitting in a new cradle.  Must've been elves.  Port hull off the strongback I couldn't resist temptation and pulled the hull out of the workspace into the main shop, pulled the starboard hull out of its hidey hole, got some help with the deck, and viola!  It's a boat!  And everything fits (or close).   I've been trying to visualize the actual size - it's a lot bigger than I thought, and I'm quite pleased.  A lot of work yet to be done, but I'm pretty chuffed with where it's at today! Thanks, elves!!!

Why... One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly is "why"?  The answer is pretty simple - new boats (used just don't exist) are 10-15K.  Building a new boat from scratch is more in the 2-3K range.  Here's "Murphy", our existing boat.  14' older design (probably 90s).  The deck gave out last year (large areas of rotted balsa), so we replaced it with 3/4" underlayment in order to use it for a few weeks until the new boat is ready.  Anna and Sam - Jr Worlds Team!!! And here's a link to the GoFundMe to send a Sam and Anna to Junior World Championships in Romania.   Both of these athletes have been training hard over the past couple of years, and were selected at Team Trials in April.  Anna is in seat 1 and Sam in seat 4 of the K-4 (video below).  One of the other reasons for building a new launch is to have a launch that is capable of going as fast as the K-4 without being at max throttle! Progress report -