All Blog Posts (165)

So I brought SoNice from her previous home down in Alamitos Bay in Long Beach up to Marina Del Rey.



I have loved the look of these beautiful boats for years, and I have loved this girl up close and personal for the last few months as we've gotten her ready to make the trip up here, both mechanically and cosmetically: but delays have kept me from being able to take her out on anything more than one very brief trial just to test out the engine.



So the first sea trial was a 12…

       Cut out the first layer of 3/4" (I actually used two 3/8 pieces because I am building in place now and they are easy to bend, until the epoxy drys!). The bulwark on the transom is a little different than the rest of the boat in that the first layer extends below the deck and nestles in the transom knee notch (approximately 14" wide in center, down to 13 1/2 at outsides). Next comes the deck beam. The narrow curved piece on the transom is the old one in a position to mark for the new…

The Masts are down! Napa Valley Marina - Napa California.  I made it up the Napa river without running aground riding a 5 knot flood tide.  The masts, booms, and bowsprit are now sitting in the yard.  Removing them was easy enough since they had a manbasket to remove the triadic stay.  It is a simple matter of removing all the turnbuckles and plucking them from the boat with a crane.

From what I can see the main mast front board has a seem where it has begun to separate all…

    Jack Long, professional diesel mechanic, and my good friend, came over today and we reassembled my engine.  These are notes that I will never be able to keep in my head, so I write them down. First of all let me say something about the process. I have met more fine people with this engine than any other thing in my life, except maybe the boat, of which they are included. But the idea that there is no way to force a time schedule on bonding with and repairing your engine is a valid…

She has been a good boat and our home fo 7 years,but ran into medical problems and our sailing days are about to be over .if any one is interested leave me a email dietrichborn2sail@hotmail.com Dont know what to ask all offers considered

        In building the transom three sheets of 3/8 marine plywood were used. Originally the outside sheet was mahogany, in case one wanted to show wood, but I did not do that. Cost of a sheet of 3/8" marine plywood in Chattanooga, a few pieces at a time, is $45.00 dollars. I have gotten a quote for $42.95 if I order 30 sheets - which I will probably do because I am planking the hull in two layers of 3/8". My reasons for doing this are that I generally work by myself, or at best with one…

        Located center of old transom by bisecting old knee paint lines. Then drew a couple of perpendiculars out to the sides to see if distance from bottom of luan (base line) was equal on both sides. . Put a couple of screws along center axis to maintan position, then walked to one side and traced, then the other.  Checked distance from traced corners to baseline - both identical. Cut out template.…

        So I am trying to create this complicated piece of framing for the transom, but the whole port side corner is rotted away. Only the side remains in place. Fortunately I saved the vertical framing off the old transom.

So with some careful measurement from the stb. side and a piece of chine I located the vertical framing's position.

The bottom piece of…

     This is a tough piece (for me anyway) that is bowed and curved, and beveled, as well as notched out. It starts at the bottom/side/transom junction (back corner), where it also recieves the chine, and butts at the other end into the apron.  It is what holds the bottom to the transom, with the bottom overlapping this piece and the transom layers. Here is a shot of the stb. old and my first attempt at the…

    After long deliberation, and essentially a stall out on the project, the decision to remove the transom before finishing the last two full frames was made because 1) there was no chine to build to and 2) the side frame members were still well connected to the inner clamp, which meant that the sides would be a stable reference for the new transom. On the other hand, to remove and rebuild the frames first would have meant sawsalling them off the inner clamps and side. Then, without the…

   This definitely a work in progress as well as a documentation of the transom area, so since there are a lot of photos, and as far as I can tell you only get 3 photos per blog, there will be TRANSOM 1, Transom 2, etc. In Transom 1 I will start out with a photo from Dennis Gaffeny's Le Batteau Sans Souci (now gone, but I have her masts and sails), showing the transom without a transom.…

So it's been a LONG time in coming, mostly involving me waiting and handing over stacks of bills...

But we finally took SoNice out for a spin!

It was just a quick one. A few minutes to circle Alamitos Bay to check engine vibration & alignment, RPMs, shifting and throttle - making sure that things were in order.

There's still an issue with the exhaust cooling - it's leaky - so we're going back to another sleeve we have, I believe.

I'll be losing use of the…

My last sailboat I not-so-jokingly have referred to as "The Best Equipped 20-foot Sailboat in All of Southern California" was an interesting learning experience, at least in part because she taught me to be really impressed with the Newporter's extreme sturdiness. That 20, a 1968 Newport, is solidly equipped for coastal cruising and near-coast excursions, with two good-size solar panels, a chartplotter, depth sounder, an autopilot, roller furler, and a good sail inventory with associated…

Bob Mitchell asked me in a PM (I'm greatly paraphrasing, there was more to it) if I knew where my particular Newporter was constructed.

I decided that the history was interesting enough, and something that I'd want to have convenient reference to apart from my logbook, that I'd place it in a blog entry.

I was curious about the origin and past of this boat - and fortunately, I have a LOT of documentation on her - previous owners have done a pretty good job of preserving…

I wrote this up originally (with a couple edits to make it appropriate for a blog post and to add a few more details) as an email to Bob here at N40T and thought it would make a good introductory post here.

I just bought a 1959 Ackerman Newporter.

Hoping to find some good footage of a Newporter in original condition, I got the movie "My Blood Runs Cold (1965)" which I'd read contained scenes shot on one.

Turns out, there's a little over 20 minutes worth of footage that takes place on one, and it provided some interesting insights: so I pulled the clips all together into one YouTube video featuring just the scenes of interest to Newporter owners and lovers. I didn't edit it very vigorously, so there are certainly camera…

         Engine block hunting turned about to be more of a challenge than expected. After the decision was made to go back to the original Ford Osco Diesel 172 (1967) instead of the Ford Osco Diesel 192 (cylinder walls were gone) that had been put in in 1977 - because the 192 was a 172 block, which in my opinion, was overbored, I started with a 172 block from Russel Tractor parts in Scottsboro, Alabama, for $500.  However, it was not tapped for an engine balancer. But my diesel guru Jerry of…

     In March Deb and I took a trip up the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake to Lewes, a very cool old town on the Delaware Bay, where we caught the ferry across the Delaware Bay to Cape May, New Jersy. At that point we weren't far from the home ground of Captain Clyde Phillips and the Dorchester Shipyard. Clyde, of course, worked at the Dorchester Shipyard building that most famous and loved (or cursed?) of all boats, the Newporter 40 (if you want more info there are articles by and about…