USA577 Wafi is for sale! $65,000

See http://www.usa650.com/coppermine for photos of the build and sailing!

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Work, work, and more work. When do we get to sail these things?

So last week we finished up most of the carbon work, painted the topsides and fooled around on about a million other projects, and now things are starting to come together. Good thing since we are packing up to leave on Tuesday!

We spent a good part of the day today sanding the bottom of the boat, and will spray e-paint on it tomorrow sometime. We also have to finish fairing the keel and get it painted, sand the interior and get some paint in there, finish the plumbing, install the water ballast sight guages, and finish the new solar panel mount.

Wow, that sounds like a lot now. And that isn’t the whole list I’m afraid! There are going to be some more projects in Newport before the race…

Working on the spreaders, wate…

Working on the spreaders, water ballast, and wiring today. Ugh!

Update on the eKo

On her way to the water today!

Well, here she is going in the water. We will finish rigging the next day or two and hopefully sail her before the weekend. Then it’s back to work on WAFI for a bit!! More info on www.thirdcoastcomposites.com

Sorry no pics of the splash, but I did get a video that we will try to post later.

Drew

4/29/09 Update

Hi all,

It’s been a little bit since I put the site up again, and I decided it was time to do a quick update. I figured I better get with it now since we are only about another month away from the Bermuda 1-2! We have a lot of work to accomplish in the next few weeks, but progress is being made each day. Here are a few photos of our progress..

New rudder hardware from Dad – a little bigger, and better reinforced. We also hit something on the last day of the 07 Bermuda 1-2 that dented the stbd rudder and actually enlarged the bolt holes a bit in the transom, causing a little leak.. these new ones ought to solve that!

Next we are on to another miserable project .. we are repainting the topsides and bottom, replacing of course the numbers and putting the boats name on the side as well. At the moment we are at the ‘almost ready to paint’ stage. Check back in a week!

You might notice that the stanchions and stern pulpits are missing too. Ugh. Our spacing was no longer legal, so we needed to move the stanchions and completely replace the stern pulpits with new ones. 

We also have to do something more permanent with our floatation foam inside. We put our new superlight foam up in the bow that we hotwire cut to fit the shape of the boat, and have now built a carbon shell around it, which we still have to tape in there the next couple days..

We have a few more details to take care of  after this. We still have to update the doors, install a new carbon water ballast intake, rewire the boat, and we are making some changes to the mast as well.. whew! It’s a lot to tackle this late in the game, but we will get it done.

The other exciting things that happened today are that I received my new sails from Schurr Sails. Here are a couple photos. We laid them out and cut and fit the battens, and then brought the mast and boom to the sails to take a look and make sure that our measurements were all right. Thankfully, they look perfect! we will know a little more when we get the mast work finished and get the mast stepped in another week or so!

So this year we got a new Mainsail, Jib, and a Code 5. We have an existing AP runner, Code 0, and storm sails that are passable. Our previous sails were just not up to the task. They didn’t fit, were recut several times, and still were not right. Our previous sailmaker didn’t understand the boat at all, and delivered the sails so late that we barely had time to make them fit well enough to even race. It was pretty disappointing. This time we went with a great loft, and had lots of advice from friends that know what the sails are supposed to look like and how they should perform. (Thanks Jan and Hunter) There are not many lofts here in the US that get mini’s. 

And here last but not least is a sneak preview of the eKo keel that Katie has been sanding on for the last couple days!!

And the eKo got it’s sails this week too!

Okay that’s more than enough for today! I will post some more in a day or two..

Drew

Where in the hell is the USA650 team?

Where to start?!? For those of you that have not been following along already here is an update of the past year or so… Katie and I moved to Texas to work with Sam Ausmus to start building a Series (production) Mini based on the design of our own boat. It has been a long process! We decided that our existing moulds were not up to the task of building a production boat, so we needed to build at least one more prototype out of the mould, make it perfect, and then pull new moulds from that boat. We first had to find a customer for it. Luckily that customer was right here in Houston, and we were underway. After about 5 months of build on that boat we spent several more months making new moulds and preparing to build a series boat. We had to collect the materials and learn what we could about resin infusion. It took us a little longer than we hoped! In mid November we started hull #1, and to date we have the boat basically completed with the hull and deck joined together this week. We expect to start putting hardware on it next week and be sailing in a month if all goes well. Katie will sail this boat in the Bermuda 1-2 this summer, and I will sail WAFI. Stay tuned for more about this new boat. It’s going to be exciting! Check out the website for the project of you are interested. http://www.thirdcoastcomposites.com

That was only part one of the story! We have had some other adventures since we moved to Texas. When we moved down here we found a nice little house in a small island town called Clear Lake Shores about 5 miles from the shop. We convinced the landlord to give us a break on the rent in return for painting a sprucing up the place. We took our time doing it, and had just really finished it to our satisfaction in about August of last year. Things were great. Then we had a little weather problem in the form of Hurricane IKE. We retreated the day before it came ashore to Denver Hopkins place north of Houston to ride it out. When we returned a couple days later we found the floor of the house covered in mud and a waterline on the wall at 3-4 feet above the floor. Say goodbye to the house, and nearly all of our belongings. Bummer.

Let me back up just a bit now. While we were living in Clear Lake Shores we got interested in simplifying our lives a bit, and were looking for a way to do some travelling, so we purchased an old GMC motorhome to restore. The coach was in great shape externally, and did run, but needed to have a new interior, which we were excited to construct. We started working on it, but hadn’t finished much when IKE struck. We hoped that the motorhome would be all right, but it had water damage as well. We were able to return it for a little credit to the folks we purchased it from, and got another project delivered a couple months after the hurricane. Meanwhile we lived with our friend and boss Sam and his wife Vicky. After a couple months of work on it we have it in livable condition and have moved in for good. We have it parked just outside the workshop (very convenient!), and have settled into a normal routine again.

This being an odd year we are preparing once again to spend all of our time and money to participate in the Bermuda 1-2 Yacht Race. I will start documenting all of the projects I have to complete to bring WAFI up to the current class rules and also make some improvements as Iwe go along.

We will also post some updates about the rest of our projects – the RV, other boats we are working on, and our plans for the future. It’s going to be a busy spring, but we will try to keep the website up to date as much as possible!

Drew