Yesterday Grant built a base to hold the 12 volt car battery and wired a DPDT (center off) switch to supply 12VDC to the motor. Flip the switch forward to go forward; move it to the center position to stop the motor. And, move it to rear position to back up. The hull alone, with no battery, no motor, now weighs about 39 pounds. The battery weighs 42 pounds. So the battery weighs more than the boat! The trolling motor, battery bracket, switch and wire, weigh about five pounds.
Well, the 40 year-old motor runs and the 4 year-old battery has a full charge, so ...
.. let's strap the boat on the car's roof, and take it to Creve Coeur Lake for a trial run with the motor.
It moves right along with Zac at the controls.
The new keel makes the boat track very well when paddling. Darn -- we forgot to take photos of Zac using the new "Wal-Mart Special" wood paddle. It works great and, at 95 inches, is none too long for the boat's freeboard.
Larry took it for a spin. Grant did too. Funny, the boat goes faster for Zac.
We'll guess the motor ran about 20 minutes today. Afterwards, at home, the battery charger first showed about 9 amps; in about 20 minutes it showed 6 amps.
Here's a little movie taken with Grant's "point and shoot" still camera today, April 28.
On Thursday, May 1, Grant cleaned up the shop a bit and built a new, smaller bench for the Four Winns boat project. He also sanded the pirogue's keel a bit and gave the exterioer another coat of green paint. Here are three photos:
On Sunday, May 4, Grant took the boat back out to Creve Coeur Lake and ran it for an hour. He launched from the Rowing Club docks and made one lap of portion of the lake north of the highway. When he returned home, he put the battery on the charger and noted these readings:
The boat need a back rest. Or maybe it's just Grant who needs the support on trips of an hour or so. A couple watched as I brought the boat back into the rowing harbor and wanted to know all about it. The man said he knew someone who wants "a boat just like yours." i.e., light enough for one person to "cartop" and with a motor. I gave them the URL for this website. Hope they find it helpful.
BTW, The "lost" kayak paddle was hiding in the garage! Grant found it today when he started moving stuff around to get back to work on the Four Winns project.
Our next two boating events will be the "You Can Paddle Day" sponsored by the Alpine Shop on May 10 and the Messabout on Rend Lake:
THE 19TH ANNUAL MIDWEST MESSABOUT WILL BE HELD THE WEEKEND
OF JUNE 6, 7, & 8 2008 @ GUN CREEK CAMPGROUND @ REND LAKE IN
SOUTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS.
Although the focus of this event is on homemade boats,
factory boats are always welcome as are people with
no boats but who have an interest in homemade boats.
This is a very loosely-organized (in other words, it's
disorganized) event. Generally people just kind of
hang-out and look at each other's boats and maybe
try-out each other's boats and talk about each other's
boats and so on and so forth.
As of May 1, 2008, the most recent 100 visitors to this web site came from all over the USA, Mexico and Indonesia:
As of May 9, 2008, the most recent 100 visitors (of 440) to this web site came from these places:
Haven't posted here since May 9 and now it's Friday, June 13. In the past few weeks Grant has had the boat on Lauderdale Lakes in Wisconsin and on Rend Lake in Southern Illinois (at the Midwest Messabout.) At Lauderdale, Grant managed to break a blade off the 40 year old plastic propeller. He stuck it back on with epoxy. The patch held, but one blade was about 3/16 inch "in front" of the other, resulting in some vibration. Although a bit irratating, Grant enjoyed about three more one-hour cruises.
At Rend Lake a few of the Messabouters told Grant they were sure replacement props are available. So last weekend Grant did a Google search and found Young Manufacturing right here in Missouri. Grant sent them $19.95 on Monday and an aluminum replacement prop arrived in today's mail:
(6/13/08) Here's where the most recent 100 of 985 visitors to this website live:
Yesterday Grant built a base to hold the 12 volt car battery and wired a DPDT (center off) switch to supply 12VDC to the motor. Flip the switch forward to go forward; move it to the center position to stop the motor. And, move it to rear position to back up. The hull alone, with no battery, no motor, now weighs about 39 pounds. The battery weighs 42 pounds. So the battery weighs more than the boat! The trolling motor, battery bracket, switch and wire, weigh about five pounds.
Well, the 40 year-old motor runs and the 4 year-old battery has a full charge, so ...
.. let's strap the boat on the car's roof, and take it to 
Larry took it for a spin. Grant did too. Funny, the boat goes faster for Zac. 
