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Epilogue

August 6, 2025: This blog is about building a boat, not sailing it, but I think that it really needs a conclusion. It needs to show the boat in action.

Failure to (do much more than) launch

Alert longtime readers will recall that I have been receiving increasing pressure from Julia to get this boat completed and in the water. This is the third year in a row that I predicted launching this year. I can now claim victory, just barely.

Our waterfront is very hostile — rocky and steep. My project for next year is to build a little ramp where I can keep the boat when not in use, and launch and return the boat somewhat easily. But I needed to just get the boat in the water this year. Hannah was leaving the lake for a couple of weeks today, and the rest of us are flying to SF for a wedding next week, so I really needed to launch yesterday, latest. The plan was to drive the boat to the public launch with Audrey, Hannah and Julia would be in the motorboat and go to the launch, they would pick up Audrey, I would paddle away from the launch, raise the sail, and then be photographed (and possibly rescued) by my family in the motorboat. This is crazy complicated, with many opportunities for disaster.

So I sent email to the people on our road, asking if someone had a gentler waterfront that I could launch from, just this once. Dwight responded immediately and volunteered his place. I walked down the road and saw that it was perfect. The driveway goes down almost to the water, it's a circular driveway (so no backing up a trailer), and there's a gentle slope into the water.

I attached the boat to the trailer (and also made sure that I could rig the sail).

The boat made it safely to Dwight's.

Hannah and I carried the boat to the water (to the sound of loons!), and put it in the water. Mission accomplished. That's Julia in the motorboat.

My social media people (Hannah) are hard at work.

Getting the boat ready to sail.

Although there were some gotchas.

But the boat is in the water.

And I was in the boat while the boat was in the water. However, I did not get very far. Near the beginning of this video, you can see that I am trying to steer with the rudder, and the rudder comes off the boat. That was the second time it happened.

At this point, I realized that what I had was a bug, and I needed to go debug it. So I searched the CLC archives, and phoned CLC support. I learned the following:

• Other people in the CLC forums have run into this exact problem with the Skerry.
• There is a missing rudder part. In addition to the gudgeons and pintles, there was supposed to be a little bracket, a stop tang, sitting above the top gudgeon, whose entire purpose is to prevent the rudder from popping out. That part was not included in my kit (or maybe I lost it).
• The manual mentions neither the stop tang, nor the propensity of the rudder to fall off the boat while sailing.
• If you buy the gudgeons and pintles kit separately from CLC, it includes the stop tang.
• Andrew, the helpful support guy who has built 10 (!) boats, said that he would send me the stop tang.
• Then Andrew sent me another email saying, hang on, that part doesn't actually work on the Skerry. He sent me a video of a different kind of stop tang, and promised to send that to me. I might also be able to find what I need at a hardware store.

So I launched the boat, and my entire family was able to be there for it. The launch was pretty disappointing, but as an experienced software developer, I have come to expect that my program doesn't run perfectly on the first try. I'm in debugging mode, it's fine.

I will post a follow-up once I have the rudder problem fixed. Dwight has offered the use of his ramp again.