Ahoy, boaters! Welcome to yet another boating blog, this one focused mainly on small-craft cruising and boatbuilding on the canals and lakes of Ontario, Canada.

Many folks- like us- love the water, but have land-based commitments (you know, jobs and things like that) that prevent us from sailing off to the sunny south. That's OK- there are plenty of interesting places to cruise right here in Canada, many of which can be explored in a weekend (or perhaps a long weekend... or a week).

Our current flagship is Maverick V, a 1974 C&C 35 Mk.II sloop. She's supplemented by Sunset Chaser, a five-metre runabout designed by Phil Bolger and built by Matthew B. Marsh in 2001. In the shop is the prototype of the Marsh Design Starwind 860 power trimaran, which we are building to extend our cruising grounds.

On The Water

Photos, ramblings and the occasional bit of useful information from our voyages aboard the runabout Sunset Chaser and other small boats.

Something's not right with this outboard...

Submitted by Matthew on

"Kr-r-r-rattle-rattle-CHUNK."

It's not a sound you want to hear from an outboard engine.

The cause of the noise is shown in the photo. Can you find it?

Engine technology to watch for

Submitted by Matthew on

With the recent release of the final report of Nigel Calder's HyMAR project, marine internal combustion / electric hybrid powertrains are making waves once again- and not necessarily in a good way, as Calder's team found that the benefits of the expensive hybrids were limited to a relatively narrow, low-speed operating regime. We've known for quite a while that the major advantages of gas/electric and diesel/electric hybrid cars- namely, instant start/stop and regenerative braking- don't apply to boats. We've also known for quite a while that hybrid systems only make economic sense aboard ship if the house loads are comparable to, or larger than, the power required for main propulsion.

Tech addicts need not fear, though: There are many other fuel-saving and pollution-reducing technologies waiting in the wings, and hybrids aren't quite out of the running yet.

Fog over Collins Bay

Submitted by Matthew on

Fog may be a routine matter for the Maritimers who read this; for us Great Lakes folk, though, it's a bit of a rarity during the boating season. Most boaters around here simply avoid it, but there are often a handful who will forge on through no matter what.

Towing big things with a small boat

Submitted by Matthew on

Towing little things with a big boat is pretty straightforward. There are plenty of nuances and details, of course; one sure way to spark a lengthy debate among cruising sailors is to ask about the best way to tow a dinghy. But, ultimately, towing something smaller than your own boat boils down to "tie it up, fiddle with the tow line, then drive normally".

Towing big things with a little boat is somewhat trickier, not to mention riskier. It is, nevertheless, important to be able to do it. You never know when you might have to press the dinghy into service to get a crippled mothership into harbour, or when you might need to help someone out in an emergency.

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In The Shop

Dispatches from the shop: Progress reports on our boat building projects, plus some useful information for those of you who are building, restoring or repairing your own boats.

Crossbeam webs

Submitted by Matthew on

After a (rather too long) hiatus from building the Starwind 860, we're back at it with the plywood webs of the aft crossbeams. (A similar set for the front crossbeams will be built once this pair are complete.)

The trimaran's folding crossbeams are a fairly conventional box section structure, with plywood webs fore and aft joining thicker top and bottom flanges of laminated wood strips.

A truckload of plywood

Submitted by Matthew on

Delivery day is always a good day for someone building a boat.

We picked up the first batch of okoume plywood for our Starwind 860 yesterday- the first real "work trip" for the '05 GMC Yukon XL that'll eventually become this boat's road-going companion. Progress then ground to an immediate halt. (If it's 28 C and mostly sunny, you don't work- you take the boat out to the sandbar to chill out for a while.)

Learning to arc weld

Submitted by Matthew on

One thing I never really got around to learning in high school or in university was how to do a decent job with an arc welder. It's about time to change that- Sunset Chaser's trailer needs work, our weird new Starwind 860 will need a custom trailer, and there's always plenty of stuff that needs fixing.

It's one thing to read about how to do it- friendly old Google offers up 1.58 million pages on the subject. And, having been through engineering school, I have a pretty good idea how a weld works, what a good one should look like, and how the stresses are transferred across it.

Friends who know, though, always respond with "Well, you can read all you want, but the only real way to learn it is to lay down dozens of really bad welds until you start to get the hang of it."

So, for anyone else who's thinking of learning how to weld and is a bit intimidated by the idea, here's my "Day 1" report- complete with terrifying photos of beginner screw-ups.

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