How TO for Boat Dummies

Bad Blogger!

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I try to do a Mon/Weds/Fri posting schedule and facilitate Quincy the Boat Dog’s Posts on Sunday.  It’s been a hectic week, so I missed my post yesterday, wanted to do it today but missed it again.  I will be back on my schedule tomorrow.  Remember I live on a boat with two small children, a Great Dane and LOTS of boat projects….but I love writing on the website and have more ideas than time.  And…it rained for three days in San Diego which is really rare and generally sucks.  The rain got  to us all, delaying all my projects.  I’m working on making dinghy chaps and curtains right now…it’s a slow process.

Here’s the end of my post:

Amelia Rose Goes to Sea

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It’s taken me over a month now to be able to put into words the emotions of watching our former sailboat leave for Baja Ha-Ha 2018.   Having your current and former sailboat able to be in one picture is cool enough,  but watching your former sailboat glide from her slip one last time proved to me how enraptured I can be with sailboats and the emotions they spark, even when I don’t own them. Continue reading →

Digitized Aleutian 51 Ketch Plans and Drawings

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In the post below is my photo essay containing the hand-drawn plans for the Aleutian 51 Ketch.  Mr. Stan Huntingford was the designer and if you look closely at one of the sheets, you’ll see it’s actually dated, October 20th 1975.  I was around in the world- were you?  In October of 1975, we were most likely preparing to sail down Baja California on the original Tulum II with my parents.  Through new information from one of the editors for Cruising Outpost Magazine; there were only 9 Aleutians built in Taiwan in the late 70’s and there may have been several more built in Canada  sometime during this period too.  I’ve tracked several Aleutians via this blog/website:  ours is here in Southern California prepping for Baja Ha-Ha 2019,  another Aleutian is very much alive and sailing in the Caribbean, one Aleutian was sailed from the US to Australia and is detailed in several of author Jackie Parry’s books,  another is somewhere in Ventura or Oxnard (California) while another was sold somewhere in Spain several years ago.  If you have any information on other Aleutians, I’d love to hear from you.  Enjoy the plans, I’m glad we can continue the legacy of the lady we live and sail on:  Continue reading →

Digitized Aleutian 51 Ketch Plans and Drawings

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I’ve been working on the best way to put out the complete hand drawn plans and drawings of the Stan Huntingford designed Aleutian 51 sailboat so that if people need to see them, there’s always access.  Although only 9 actual original Aleutian 51’s were built in Taiwan to Stan Huntingford’s specs, I wonder how many more were built in Canada- with or without his approval.  I’ve heard there are two more “Canadian” Aleutian’s out there.  If we had these plans and didn’t find a way to get them out, I might be a dismal failure.  So in the summer of 18 (before I retired) a friend professionally photographed the plans for me and digitized them.  I’ve spent some time last week touching them up and making them more readable.  I’ll get them on this website and blog tomorrow as a photo essay.  If you need more info on Aleutian 51 Ketch’s, we’re trying to become a resource for you.

Republished- Digital Hunter Sailboat Owners Manual

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I’m republishing the Digital Hunter 460 Owners Manual I managed to get from Marlow-Hunter.   After I found this electronic copy and worked through publishing the link in 2016,  never in my imagination did I think we’d still be writing and publishing this tiny blog…with a second larger sailboat.  I’m also republishing this digital owners manual because I found the entire set of designer drawings for my 1977 Aleutian Ketch and convinced a friend to help me photograph and digitize the entire set of plans.  I just put them on my computer, edited them to make them more readable and will POST them as a photo essay early next week.  It’s my intent to collect as much information about the (11) different Aleutians that were built and have that info on this website- these digitized plans are a big start to that project.  We think we’ve found approx (6) of the Aleutians; and we’ve had actual email or blog contact with (3) of the owners or former owners of those boats.  Have you ever checked out Cruisers AA by Jackie Parry or any of her other books?  She and her husband owned an Aleutian for several years.  I digress.  The link to the plans is in the post, you have to access it digitally.

Continue reading →

Quiet Time to Prep for Sea

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This morning after I walked the dog, the great fire-ball in the sky eased its way past the light clouds still burning a shade red from the smoke of the California fires.  Despite the chill in the air and the 6am wake up to get the dog out for her morning walk, I knew this was my time to putz around our boat and slowly prep her for sea.  Usually there’s a bit of lunacy in the rush to get her ready for sea, but on this morning I had the boat to myself as the crew slumbered its way to a relaxing wakeup.  After deciding to leave my SURFFUR on and grabbing my Yerba Mate, I slowly put the boat together to get her ready to sail.  There’s something calming yet alive (for me) about putting the boat together to get her off the docks, as if she’s ready.  As I started to get her covers off, lines straightened up and other assorted tasks done, she seemed to come alive to me; she knew we were going to sea.  The Great Dane followed me around the boat, trying to figure out what the heck I was going to the boat at 6:30 in the morning, catching my mood too.  Even working on this beast every day, I still found things this morning that needed to be fixed and worked but were quickly knocked out.  Getting off the dock again gives Admiral Hotwife another valuable chance to practice getting this 50+ foot boat into and out of the dock and we’re planning to get out of San Diego bay for a change to get her into open water.

I’ll probably have some great photos and some kind of update to this post later, hope you come back this afternoon to check us out and stay with us as we continue our march toward October of 2019.