Sewing Machine For Upholstery and Enclosure Canvas

A few years back,my girlfriend and I purchased a 1962 Singer Fashion Mate 237 from my aunt for a song.Soon after,I located an owners manual for the sewing machine on Ebay.Reading through it,I have found that the sewing machine is capable of doing upholstery and canvas sail cloth work.I was a bit surprised that the sewing machine is rated for canvas sailcloth.The sewing machine is heavy,around 80 pounds.I believe the body is cast steel.I know the internals are high quality precision machined steel,possibly hardened.I worked for a friend that did auto,rv,and marine upholstery.His father also owned a household upholstery shop.I worked for him when we didnt have work.At those two shops,I used a Pfaff and a Consew.I briefly had an auto upholstery shop where I leased some off brand sewing machine.It was a horible machine that wouldnt hold its timing and constantly bent or broke needles.Its not fun having a needle fly past your eye at sub light speed.Always wear safety glasses.Sounds goof,I know,but flying needles can be dangerous.Some of the newer industrial commercial machines have clear plastic glass guards to protect the operator.I dont need,nor can I afford,to go with an industrial sewing machine.

Recently,I had been looking into Sailrite sewing machines.I know that when I build my boat,I will want to do all the work I can myself.After viewing some of their sewing machines,I feel confident that my sewing machine will handle the job.I am not knocking Sailrite sewing machines.They are quality.My sewing machine may not have all the options and accessories as a Sailrite,but it is more than enough for the simplistic interior and canvas work that will be on my boat.I will have a few seat cushions,interior,and exterior window coverings.I wont have a flybridge to deal with covering and/or enclosing.I will enclose my rear deck.I will have a rack over my rear deck to carry my dinghy.My plan is to hang my canvas from the rack like the old external frame tents used in the 1950s and 60s.It will seal to the back of the cabin with a belt rail system similar to those used on Jeep CJs and Wranglers.All in all,there wont be as much sewing on my boat compared to something like a Bayliner of comparable dimensions.


Here are some pictures of my sewing machine.It came with a beat up cheapo cabinet.I will build a small table to set it in when I get ready to do the upholstery for my boat.



Here is the cabinet open.The sewing machine nestles down inside of it. Lifting the stand allows the sewing machine to rotate up and out of the cabinet. Here is the speed control(gas) pedal.It is aluminum with a plastic pedal. Here is the machine rotated up out of the cabinet.You can see all the precision steel machine work.Also visible is the date stamp,8162 or August 1,1962. This machine has a lot more options than first appears.About 60 different ways to set up for sewing.It will even do embroidery and buttons.Thats gotta be useful. Here is a picture of the built in light and the motor.Dont be fooled by the motors compact size,it got some power.

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Copenhagen Wooden Optimist

We have the navigation tab for the videos above, but would like to thank Mikkel for sharing the videos of his project.
The boat was built during spring/summer 2015 at ES Nord boatbuilding school in Hillerød/Copenhagen Denmark.

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Music Whenever Bob Dylans cover of It must be Santa

I first heard this song the past week playing on our local radio station, WRNR. Im surprised Ive never before come across Dylans take on the raucous pagan festival side of the holiday. Any song that leads off with an accordion is alright with me and Dylan fits in his customary wordplay among the lyrics by interspersing the name of recent U.S. presidents with the names of Santas reindeer.

Wishing Earwigoagin readers; Happy Holidays or, Happy Turn of the Year. (Whatever floats your boat.)

And for Jim Carreys beautiful rendition of "White Christmas", click here.

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MacGregor 26

When the MacGregor 26 came out in, I think the 1980s, I and other sailing purists were horrified. The MacGregor 26, the sailboat that was a motorboat, or vice-versa, had the effrontery to strap a big outboard on the back and become a very quick motorboat, one that could easily pull a water-skier. My thought at the time, "why not just go out and buy a nice little outboard skiff rather than this sailing/motor bastardization?" Im sure, this was the same thought many other sailors shared. It seemed the the #1 marketing point of the Mac 26 was its motorized performance as shown in this video (this is not what a sailboat is about! What about the ambience, the wind and the waves?).



I recently had a conversation with Jim, a retired boat dealer, 35 years in the industry, and he couldnt say enough good things about the MacGregor 26, enough praise to make me feel that my first knee-jerk reaction may have been unwarranted. Eleven thousand of the 26s were built, seven thousand in the U.S and four thousand distributed world wide. Those numbers alone make the MacGregor 26 one of the most successful small cruising sailboats ever built. Jim told me this real life story of one of his customers to demonstrate the capabilities of the MacGregor 26.

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Two fathers with their sons trailer launched their MacGregor 26 out of West River one Friday night and motored the mile or so over to Rhode River to spend the night off of one of the small islands. Saturday morning, early, they blasted over the flat calm waters of Chesapeake Bay to where the fish were biting. They fished all morning, grabbed a lunch in the spacious cabin, and, with the breeze up, filled the ballast tanks for a pleasant sail back to the take out ramp at West River.

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Jim, who sold and also owned the 26, ticked off several selling points of the MacGregor 26:

• A great family boat because the kids got to do the things they enjoyed; water skiing, tubing and not so much the things they found boring, such as drifting in light air. Plus you could get to the anchorages quick enough to enjoy swimming and hanging out with other kids.
• A very roomy interior. With the MacGregor 26, designer Roger MacGregor anticipated the latest "French" styling of Beneteau and Jenneau with the high freeboard and swoopy coach-roof, all in the name of interior space.
• Decent sailing performance. Jim is an accomplished sailor and took the MacGregor 26 over to the Bahamas and did a circumnavigation of the Outer Banks.
• Trailerable, so you could get to a place to sail to the Bahamas or the Outer Banks. Or you could just pull in to a beach.

I must admit, Ive never been on a MacGregor 26 (overall though, I havent been on many different cruising sailboats so that isnt much of a surprise). After my conversation with Jim, I will give Roger MacGregor credit. It appears he was a design genius to successfully combine all these capabilities in one boat (my sailing snobbishness aside).

Here is  a drawing of the MacGregor 26M, which I think was the last model of the 26 (the 26X was the first). Thanks to bluefreeyachts.com.au where I got the image.

Plenty of MacGregor 26 cruising videos up on YouTube. Here is one of them.

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Pug Ugly The Scow Mini Transat 6 5

Dave Raison, in his latest scow Mini Transat 6.5, won the Mini Fastnet this past June. There are now other scow Mini 6.5s appearing. Swiss Simon Koster put one together he has named eight Cubed after the number he sails under. Included below are some photos of his new creation.

Make no bones about, these sailboats are Uglee.....High freeboard on a scow shape is not pretty. Simon Koster waved the ugly stick even more by making his cabin top very blocky.

From the The Simpsons, a quote by bartender Moe before he underwent plastic surgery.

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Moe

"Ive been called ugly, pug-ugly, fugly, pug-fugly, but never ugly-ugly."

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Ill go with pug ugly. I like scows. I like different. I like that, with these shapes, form follows function. Some would call these Mini 6.5 scows cute. (Can you call a sailboat cute?).

From this bottom-up, bow-on angle, combined with the paint scheme, eight Cubed appears to have the bottom of a rubber ducky bathroom toy.

Ah! Thats more like it. The familiar wide arse of a Mini-Transat 6.5.

You can see the odd split, blocky looking, almost comical cabin house with forward facing window in this photo of eight Cubed hanging in the shop before the initial launch.

A video of the start of the Mini-Fastnet. Winner David Raison in #865 with the distinctive blue jib can be seen starting about 56 seconds into the video and then at 2:20. 8-Cubed shows up at the 1:43 mark.

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Header Photo SS Sloop

The previous header photo was of two intent sailors on their SS Sloop, one of U.S.As oldest dinghy classes. Designed by Benjamin Hallock of Moriches Bay, Long Island in 1908, he built 74 of them before he died in 1931. About fifty more SS Sloops were built after Hallock with at least one new build in the new millennium.

Moriches Bay, on the south side of Long Island, normally has a consistent sea breeze in the afternoon and the SS Sloop sports a low slung gaff rig designed to be easily handled in strong breezes. About thirty of the SS Sloop are still seaworthy and the centennial regatta in 2008 had a good turnout.

Hallock was known as a good builder of cat boats before he designed the SS Sloop. However, the flat sections and narrow beam of the SS Sloop show a lineage more towards the Seawanhaka racers rather than the fatter cat boats.

The SS Sloop has a small spinnaker which is set with both sheet and guy on the same side of the mast, not the usual arrangement for flying a spinnaker in modern sailboats.

The 16.5  hull (5.03 meters) has a long enough cockpit for three. The rudder is set inboard. The gaff rig definitely has a low center of effort.

A SS Sloop out of her natural habitat. This one is moored to a dock at Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes of upstate New York.

• Will Haines writes a blog about the SS Sloop and also has a link to some PDFs of SS Sloop plans.
• Another gaff-rigged dinghy from the same time period, the Cotuit Skiff

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Optimist Gunwale looking for the perfect design

Thinking ahead to the time when we will add the gunwales (gunnels) has got my mind racing. I remember dinghies I sailed as a kid, and they always seemed to have some sizable gunwales to sit on. Some of the plywood Optimist Prams dont offer much surface area for the helmsmans backside. I know our kids will start out in light wind conditions, but it wont take long for them to want to sit on the high-side and hike while sailing.

In my searching for the best solution for this design I looked at the Club Racer by Bateau. They seem to have a comfy looking gunwale, so I looked into the way they created their version. A complete guide to the construction of the Club Racer is located at: http://www.latitude2739.com/club-racer.asp It is a really nice looking Optimist that is the same as the epoxy/wood version of the Optimist as described by the IODA standards. Bateau claims that it differs in that it is much easier to build and will be more durable, and last longer.

They start their process with corner braces cut at angles to the sides and bows to create the width that will be the gunwale. Plywood is used for this process, but I think we could use hardwood to accomplish this same design using glues and screws to bypassing the need to encase the area in epoxy.
All photos - Youth Sailing Foundation of Indian River unless otherwise noted.

To build up the width of the gunwale on the sides of the boat, they employ the use of plywood spacers to hold off the inner strake that will define the inner side of the gunwale. The picture below shows a double piece of 12mm plywood used as a spacer along with an inner and outer strake and rubrail of 12mm plywood. I believe that makes a total width of 3 inches.

The bow and transom are finished of in less thick manner shown below:

 

With the substructure of the gunwale finished it looks pretty nice. Ive been contemplating how well this design would look if we finished the gunwales without a cap piece of plywood. The plywood works well in the Club Racer because it will be sealed with epoxy. Our boats will not have epoxy, and this makes the finishing of the gunwale, perhaps a bit different.

The Club Racer is finished off with a plywood cap piece set in thickened epoxy, and then the edge is routed to 5mm radius for comfort and esthetics.

All this great information and pictures came from the Youth Sailing Foundation of Indian River Co. and their sister site Latitude 27/39 Sail Club.

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