We are on the downside of our trip to pickup the trikini 23 from Capt. Len down in Cape Coral near Fort Myers, Fl. We are currently passing Lakeland florida on I4 as we tow her back home.
It’s been (so far, knock on wood) a much easier trip than I thought it would be. I had asked my friend Steve to go with me to pick up the boat and we took his Isuzu Rodeo down with us. He is a driving fool 🙂 so far I haven’t driven at all. 🙂 I can’t say that I mind, it’s been years since I loved to drive long distance.
We drove down thursday evening and got to our friend Teresa’s house about 2:30 in the morning. It was good to see her again 🙂 The next morning after sleeping in and getting a late breakfast with Teresa we all went over to Capt. Len’s house to take a look at the Trikini 23. She was sitting there beside his house just crying out to hit the water 🙂 I must admit that on close inspection she is kinda rough. Capt. Len has done the majority of the functional restoration. There is only a little structural glass work left. All the standing rigging is ready to go. Chain plates are in and all the rigging assembled. The swing wing system is fully installed and functional. He didn’t get to smoothing out some of the glass work. However as he told me to start with she will probably never be a real pretty boat. I agree that it would take to much work to be practical to make her look like new but with a bit of fairing and some paint I think that she will look really sharp. She has had many major modification made and at this time has a kinda mongrel history. The major part of her is still Capt. Len’s original design but other owners made lots of changes and Capt. Len has put in a lot of work on her both in bringing her back closer to her original design and some enhancements and modifications of his own. She is deffinatly a different looking boat. I have already gotten several comments from people about how strange she looks 🙂 lol… I love it already 🙂
There is no running rigging. The mast has internal halyards that are still there 🙂 (thank god!) I will need to replace them. Because the boat is quite different than originaly designed I am going to have to figure out where all the deck hardware will go. Right now she is setup for a cutter rig. I have a main, jib and stay sail that have come with her. According to Capt. Len the main does not fit right and will need to be cut down? or it is too small? I don’t remember right now. 🙂
Capt Len took out the wheel steering to go to a tiller but then decided to go back to the wheel steering as being an easier route to getting her back to the water quicker. None of it has been reinstalled. I have the wheel and gear that it mounts to. I also have the cable and the terminating mount. It all has to be remounted and set up.
There are about 6 or 7 places that need a little more foam and fiberglass including the mast step post. The supports for the mast step are already made I just need to glass them in place and fill the enclosed area with structural polyurethane foam.
There is a daggerboard hole just forward of the mast step post. According to Capt. Len the prior owner took and glassed the daggerboard slot up and filled it with foam. I will need to build a new daggerboard and construct a system to raise and lower it.
The head of the rudder looks to be in good shape. The lower part of the rudder is delaminating on the edges. Capt. Len says that it is not to the original spec and showed me what it should look like. I think I will use the existing one as a template and just build a new lower blade for the rudder.
It took us from about 5 hours yesterday to get all the parts for her together. We rigged a light bar for towing lights (she hangs 8 feet past the back of the trailer and trailer lights). It also took us a while to secure the ama’s in towing position. They swing wing system is dead simple and fast but there are no stops on the main hull to snug the ama’s up against and tie them to. This will need to be done to make trailering simpler. Right now we have a couple of fenders that are tied in place between the rear of the ama’s and the hull and then we have a tiedown connected between the rear of each ama and pulled tight the front of each ama has a rope that goes around the each of them and then pulled tight. It will work for our trip back home but isn’t what you want for ease of use in trailering. The mast with all the standing rigging and the current halyards is all duck taped together to keep anyhting from working loose and them the mast is tied down on the boat. All fittings that are still on the ama’s or boat that are lose have had duck tape put on them to keep anything from vibrating loose on the 11 hour trip 🙂 (I hope its only 11 hours) After getting everything loaded on the boat and secured we pulled the trailer up and put air in the tires and greased the bearings. It all looks good. The new trailer lights on the light bar checked out.
We came back this morning and said good bye to Capt. Len and pulled out on our trip 🙂 So far everything is going good. The trailer rides great and is pulling much easier then we thought it would. We are just this minute pulling into Lake Maury off of I4 for gas. So I am going to sign off for now. I might talk some more later but most likely it will be a day or two. 🙂
scott
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