Team Seacats

Remember our buddy from the Notably Nutty department; Kristofer J. Harley? I’m not sure if it was a sea trial or his actual around-the-world mission, but apparently he was very near to departure when, shortly after launching, he discovered the rudder bolts were leaking. Not that much of it was left…but this doesn’t help his credibility. His response to a concerned on-looker was “a little goo will do”. He was (is) expecting to leave from a secret departure site because he’s concerned that the Coast Guard might try to stop him (I suspect he’s more concerned about having an unruly crowd on hand). I do wonder how effective those lifelines are going to be….Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted!

DuckWorks Magazine

I can’t seem to remember the theme music from the intro … not that it would matter in the context of this blog. But here’s another life-altering answer to an age-old composite & molding question…what do you do if you have a helicopter museum and can’t find a full size airwolf helicopter to hang from the ceiling? The answer can be found in the following link.

The Wolf’s Lair

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

I’m sorry things have been a little slow around here – I’ve been trying to get things completed on the house and the A/C working on my ’85 Rx-7…hardly sailing related projects. At any rate, I had a few minutes last night to login to “Tacticat” – a new catamaran racing simulator that is surprisingly realistic. I played this a bit about a month ago and hadn’t been back in a while. It’s becoming quite popular and it’s really interesting racing a bunch of people from around the world! Visit it at Tacticat. Oh…and by the way, I’m the yellow boat and I won that particular race! Kevin Rejda – Nacra 6.0 sailor from the Florida (redshift) and I both made a pretty good comeback in that race.

I found this more recent ’round Texel footage from 2004. Good stuff.

I REALLY want to get going on the one meter project but the North American F18 Championship, to be held in Lake Carlysle, IL, is creeping up on us. I’ve got two major projects slated to be completed for the trip. First, we’re going to create additional sleeping space in the RV. I’m sailing again with David Mosley (fellow Team Seacats originator) and we both have shortish 23′ RV’s. It would make no sense for both of us to drive RV’s for that distance so I’ve decided to do away with my overhead entertainment center and storage and replace it with a more traditional bed. Saturday evening, Mark Hale helped me with the demolition and now, after taking some measurements and rough planning, I have a mattress on order and will begin to trim out the walls and build the bed slide.

The other project that will begin soon is to build a double stack upright for my boat trailer. Occasionally I have a need to double stack boats on the trailer. We’ll be racing on Plays With Matches and David has chartered his 2004 Nacra F18 for the event – so we need to take them both up there…again it doesn’t make sense to take two vehicles and trailers so I’ll be fabricating an upright to support the front of the top boat and some sort of support for the rear down to the boat below. When I rebuilt the trailer bearings and suspension a couple of years ago, I selected springs that could handle the additional weight of another boat for this exact purpose.

By necessity, I started another project to get the air conditioning running on my classic 1985 Mazda Rx-7 GSL-SE. I know it’s not boat or regatta related…I’ve been putting off working on the A/C on the RX-7 because of everything else I had going on, but it’s time now due to the heat. A quick diagnosis showed that the rear seal is blown on the compressor but the internals of it look good. I’ve ordered a seal kit and while I had the compressor removed, decided to tackle the excessive play in the steering (a common problem to 1st generation RX-7′s) since moving the compressor is a prerequisite. Removal of the steering gear is a very tricky process because the gear box and shaft are one piece all the way from the pitman arm to the steering wheel and there is a lot of stuff in the way – like the reverse opening hood, the radiator, the A/C compressor, the brake vacuum booster, etc. I payed for a good bit of my living during college by rebuilding Mazda rotary engines in RX-7′s…so I’ve very familiar with these cars it’s kinda fun to be working on one again. This GSL-SE is in incredible condition and is from one of only two model years they built this body style with the larger and fuel injected 13B engine and included disc brakes on a limited-slip rear end. As far as RX-7′s go, this one is pretty collectible and cosmetically is impeccable – not so bad mechanically either. I’ve put more comments on the pictures on the flickr site for the RX-7 work.