PLANS ARRIVED TODAY!

MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2008
The plans FINALLY arrived from England today! We ordered plans of a few different boats (KITE, VEKTOR, ZIG-ZAG & NIMBUS) from SAILSetc in England, http://www.sailsetc.com/ but since they do not have a pay pal option for purchasing items, or any other type of secure website, it has proved a bit difficult to get plans. Luckily, my colleague in London (England) was kind enough to send his “cheque” for the amount of the plans to SAILSetc so we can get the plans as cheaply as possible, avoiding currency conversions, wire transfer fees, e-mailing of credit card numbers, etc. The only problem is that the next time my colleague is in the States I have to buy him beer and crab cakes. As a typical Englishman, he can drink a lot of beer and he loves crab cakes, so this may be a money loosing scheme after all. Will have to wait and see.

Sunday, January 13, 2008
I Went to Al’s house this morning to strip the balsa sheets into planks and to drink Bloody Marys. You see, Al makes the finest Bloody Mary’s I have ever tasted from an old family recipe, and his wife is kind enough to let us turn their attic into a remote control boat yard of sorts. You should see the boat yard! Al put an old television in there so we could watch the football playoffs while we ‘work’ on our Bloody Marys and our boats.
Anyway, I set up a place on the work table to cut my strips of balsa and commenced cutting the strips with an Exacto knife and a straight edge. It seems that my being left handed, uncoordinated and without a lot of skill in such things, the few strips that I did manage to cut came out as curvy as J-Lo’s backside. At this point I recalled reading on the US1M site that a jig can be built to make cutting these strips easier. We epoxied up some scraps of wood and made the jig. It turns out the jig is very helpful in making straight strips of planking material, until the 3rd bloody Mary kicks in! At this point things went haywire! Luckily for me, Al’s 16 year old son came up to the ‘He-Man Women Haters Club’. Reverse psychology was used to manipulate the young man into cutting the remaining 3 sheets of balsa wood into strips. ‘Say dude, check out the jig we made to cut these strips of wood. I don’t think your old enough to use this jig, you could get hurt.’ AND, ‘Duuuuude, I bet you can’t take this jig and cut these 3 sheets of balsa into STRAIGHT strips!’ It worked! I sat back and watched Peyton (Archie Jr.) Manning and the Indianapolis Colts get beat by the Chargers of San Diego, while I sipped my wonderfully spicy bloody Mary while supervising the young man cutting strips with our special strip cutting jig! Life is good!

We are on stand-by now until the plans come in. But this is just as well, as we got to get ready for the Victoria Frostbite Regatta at Clearpoint Model Yacht Club in Houston, TX. This will be the 3rd year we have made this regatta and it is one of the best Victoria Regattas we go to. You can check it out @ http://www.clearpointmyc.org/main/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Saturday, January 12, 2008
Went to Michael’s craft store and purchased some balsa wood sheets and some crazy glue in order to be prepared when our plans do come in. The balsa sheets will be cut into strips to be laid up as the hull form. So far I have spent $26.41 on crazy glue (3 bottles of the brush on type) and five (5) sheets of 3/32 x 4"x36" balsa for planks and some extra blades for the Exacto Knife.