May 16th, 2012
FORWARD 4 FRAMES ERECTED ON THE STEM
One nice thing about modern boatbuilding is that with the accuracy afforded by CADD you can build sub-assemblies with the confidence that they will all fit together perfectly. Here I’ve glued the frames to the stem- all shaped to the CADD drawings- before the other frames are erected.
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May 16th, 2012
- THE NIGHT WE LOST THE RED-TOP
Ron Frontin has taught me that a painting isn’t finished until the artist is truly happy with it. I put some final tweaks onto my portrait of BURGOO racing in the 1966 Transatlantic race with me up on the bow at age 22. The whites of the sails were too white and lacked detail. I glazed some sun color onto them, and painted in some wrinkles and stains to make them look more realistic.
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May 11th, 2012
PAINTING "MIDATLANTIC STORM"
The boat design business is gloomy at best, and I was born to create. So that leaves painting. ”Midatlantic Storm” is my memory of a stormy afternoon from my misspent youth aboard the 37-foot yawl “Burgoo” bound for Copenhagen. We lost our rudder off of Rockall and made our way to Barra in the Hebrides.
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April 21st, 2012
PAINE 14 TRANSOM
Here’s the PAINE 14 transom. Its shape is taken from the full sized lofting that comes with the plans. The top strake is made of the best looking piece of Honduras Mahogany I could find in my shop. The lower part is clad on the outside with mahogany, but the inside, shown here, is of marine plywood.
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April 21st, 2012
THE SHAPED RUDDER
Here’s the PAINE 14 rudder after one-half hour with 36-grit sandpaper on a Makita 7.5″ diameter grinder. The plies of the plywood serve as a guide to get everything fair and smooth. One layer of 12-oz. fiberglass cloth will be epoxied on to make it more durable.
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April 13th, 2012
GLUING UP THE RUDDER
Here’s the starting point of the PAINE 14 rudder. One thing about boatbuilding- you can’t have too many clamps. If I had a dozen more, I’d have used them.
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April 13th, 2012
ABOARD RUNAGATE IN MIAMI
I was in Miami last week and walking marinas looking for my children, as I am wont to do, when I spotted a lovely blue Morris 46, RUNAGATE. It happened that one of the owners was aboard so I had a wonderful visit and an opportunity to be photographed in lovely, Morris-built surroundings. The boat is maintained in near new condition and the owner absolutely loves it. Does my heart good.
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April 12th, 2012
A Beautiful Gift
I visited Jean and Maggie Beaulieu at Classic Boatshop yesterday. They had added my hardwood order for my little PAINE 14 to their larger monthly order and I was there to pick it up. What a lovely surprise when they gave me a beautifully detailed half model of my PISCES 21! It’s kindnesses like this that make the boat design trade so special. You can view their latest newsletter by clicking here:
www.classicboatshop.com
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March 2nd, 2012
FRANCES II SAILPLAN
Here’s FRANCES II’s new sailplan. Because her deeper and much more effective keel gives her more stability than the original, she can carry a taller rig with a genoa jib. The combination of a very stiff platform and a much more powerful sailplan will make FRANCES II much faster to windward than her predecessor. The keel is only two inches deeper, but shorter in length with a perfected foil section and narrow trailing edge, so little is lost in the draft department and much gained in her pointing ability. For more information please click here
http://www.chuckpaine.com/pdf/26FRANCES26.pdf
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March 2nd, 2012
KARMA, AN EARLY FLUSH-DECKED FRANCES
This is where the famous FRANCES 26 design started- a flush-decked, shoal draft cruising yacht without an engine. Dick Cross sailed KARMA from Maine to the Caribbean for the winter in 1977. It is still a fine design but in my retirement I thought I would bring her up to date with a host of improvements. Over 200 of the yachts are now sailing, but they are getting a bit long in the tooth. If you would like a brand new FRANCES with full headroom and a much more effective keel, look no further. The drawings are nearing completion and if you hanker after the finest small adventuring yacht ever designed, I challenge you to find anything better. Renamed La Luz and now fitted with an engine, she is presently in the Galopagos after a quick passage from Panama. I’ll just quote a recent email from her owner:
“Just saw my boat LaLuz ex Karma on the Chuck Paine blog. Do you recall which hull number she is? I had heard that Art Paine did some of the original interior work. I also remember reading bits and pieces about Dick Cross and a sinking during an early BOC event.
We are currently in the Galapagos islands. We made the trip from Panama in 7 days, 6 hours. We never started the engine and were becalmed 30 hours. Granted we had a nice 1 knot current behind us, but she really flew along wing and wing in the 15 to 22 knot NE breeze.Our Windpilot self-steerer has an easy time keeping her balanced sails and hull going straight, and all we have to do is stare at the wake and dream about cold-beer and fresh water showers. We thought she was as good as it gets??….”
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