Why Did I Sell My PDQ, Why Am I Downsizing?

This was a while ago (about 7 years), but I never posted it. 

 

November 2020 

I've been asked this question dozens of times by friends, family members, and fellow sailors.  And although I was certain sometime ago it was the right thing to do, it took me a long time to understand and get comfortable with the reasons. It's many things, of course. So will apply to other people, some only to me, I supose:

Kids Grown

• My daughter is finishing grad school, so we just don't do the same family and friends cruising that we started when she was about 8.
• I've done the cruising I wanted to do with that boat. Been everyplace I like multiple times.

Down Sizing

• Financial. There is a small money aspect, but it's not about cash flow. First, I really hate waste (read "Keeping a Cruising Boat for Pennies") and I didn't feel like I would be using the boat enough. I like the idea of house, car, and well, life that fits my actual needs. Nothing excess or superfluous.

Simplify

The Need to Keep Learning

• I'm not learning anymore from the boat. Handling the boat has become as familiar as pulling on my shoes, and it is the learning process I enjoy. That is why I am always testing things.
• I've tweaked this boat as far as I want to. I like to study a boat and then decide how to upgrade her in subtle ways, always endeavoring to maintain a factory look and feel. Nothing should look pasted on and the changes should work with the original design (which in the case of the PDQ 32 is pretty darn good). Though I could probably point out 100 small changes, the most important ones were revised settee bunks, winterization fittings, inside genoa tracks, Heat, AC, modified keels, and 2' transom extensions. A lot of this is on my blog, but some has also been reserved for Practical Sailor or Good Old Boat. If you want to tweak a boat sensibly, you should subscribe to both of these. They both good search functions, particularly PS.

My Sports Car

• I like the feel of the wind. I like a boat that tacks on a dime and that one person can throw about in tight harbors. A bicycle will always be more fun to drive than a Winnebago. You only need the Winnebago when you are cruising; for a day sail it feel ridiculous.

I am in no way satisfied with the PDQ 32 and Shoal Survivor specifically. If I wanted a cruising cat for where and how I sail, I would be looking to buy exactly this boat. She's fast, durable, roomy, seaworthy in a blow, and easy to singlehand. She's tweaked exactly the way I want her. I don't think there is another cruising cat that would make me happier, and I'm including some pretty fancy rides. I trust her to go anywhere, any time.

I will be getting another boat and soon. It will back to my performance multihull roots. I see myself a little bit as the older Englishman in the flat hat and the open top sports car. I sold my SUV and bought a Mazda 3 (zoom). The focus will be daysailing with a few solo overnights. Yup, I'll tweaking it. Speed will be one thing, but this time I will be more interested in nimble handling for the singlehander. I want something "fun." Unfortunately, this means giving up a meaningful cabin and (gasp) a real toilet. Damn. I've got a dry suit for winter.

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I have no intention of leaving this forum. I have too many friends here. I will maintain my blog. After all, it started when I have Stiletto 27. I will maintain some PDQ stuff like the Word version of the owner's manual. But the way I see it, a new boat should help invigorate my writing, opening up some new topics. An who knows. In 10 years I might be looking for a PDQ again. Sailing is sailing.

But I'm not going to be one of those sad sailors that has a boat at the dock that doesn't get used but a few times a year. If I'm not sailing her every week or two, year round, it's time for someone else to love her and for me to find another boat to love. I could never stand to see a boat just sit.

I thought the PDQ was going to be my retirement boat. I really did. Good quality and would do everything I wanted. However, I have owned three boats, each for 10 years, and I think I think that is simply my nature. Thankfully, I do not feel that way about my wife, which is my constant.

Grok Goes on a Rant

(From "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein, for those of you that are young or do not read science fiction. A Martian word that means I understand you deeply.)

 

xAI has apologized for Grok's "horrific behavior" and said that new instructions caused the AI chatbot to prioritize engagement, even if that meant reflecting "extremist views" from user posts on X.

 Put more simply, the AI is dumb enough to read from social media and believe it. And so are people.

 I'm scared for what social media can do to society. Maybe I'm part of that too. Read Socrates: learn to question everything, to look at everything from several perspectives, to evaluated things for yourself, and finally to recognize that virtue, morals, and even "truth" change with time. Not as easy as listening to sound bites, is it?

Federal Debt vs. Party

 I'm not trying to say which is worse. Just sayin' politicians know that they get re-elelcted if they spend more than they tax.

 

 

 OK, I didn't want to say it ... but it's kind of obvious. As a young man I voted Republican and believed they must be more financially conservative. We didn't have good access to the real numbers. Now I can see the terrifying reality.

 It's up to about $50,000 per person, and  nearly $200,000 per family. Ouch. At some point this can be sustainable. Fewer kids. More seniors. Not sayin' when. I'll probably be dead. I guess that's what everyone keeps saying and hoping. Just pass the bag along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birth Right Citizenship

Forget the politics for a moment.

How many of us can actually prove that our parents are naturalized citizens? If you've been here for a few generations, I bet you can't find the records. Maybe your parents' parents were illegal. Very likely some relative was. My wife is deep into genealogy, and though we know when some (not all) of the past generations entered the country, I think only one of my grandparents had papers we could find. All the rest are lost to the sands of time. Another grandparent was a native American; did she come into the country illegally, 20,000 years ago? I guess there was no rule, one way of the other.

Sounds like  nightmare to me. All for news bites to someone's base, and not for anything that actually matters to the health of the country. Move on to real problems. Social security. A some-what balanced budget instead of printing money and raising the debt ceiling. That, to me, is a conservative value. Tell people some hard truth about money.

  

2:1 Main Halyard

 Thirty years ago, when I had a Stiletto 27, I switched from a wire/rope halyard to a 2:1 high modulous line halyard. Part of the reason was a wonky shoulder, the same one that is flaring up now. Both the Stiletto and my current F-24 MK1 have bolt rope-in-slot luffs, which can be high friction for the size of the sail. It's a new sail and moves as smoothly as any I have seen, so that is not the problem. 

I'm not sure how much clearance there is between the fully hoisted sail and the masthead. Some, because it tension well with a winch. But I need to hoist and probably look from down the dock with a spotting scope.

 These  images give me an idea of the other clearances.

• There seems to be enough fore-aft offset  between the pulley pin and the pin the topping lift is secured to for the dead end of the 2:1 halyard. My blue ladder is hanging from the main halyard (red), so it looks to be a good 1.5 inches forward of the pin. If I knot the halyard to the pin, the knot will not contact the sheave attached to the head of the sail. But I will need a low-profile sheave stack. I might just lash a large LFR to the head grommet, pretty slippery with Dyneema, low profile, light, and no chafe points.
• There are some sharp spots cause by a shackle hitting the masthead I should do something with. But they have not chafed my current halyard, so probably not a big problem. 

 

 I'm thinking 8 mm NER Viper with a stripped (about 6 mm) last 25-30 feet is the proper rope. The current halyard is10 mm polyester DB.

Hero Life Jackets

 Yeah, I know it is PFD in the us.

 

I very nearly never wear a PFD sailing. It's hard to fall off a multi-hull and it's easy to rig jacklines and tethers that will keep you inside the lifelines. 

Whitewater kayaking, or open water paddling, yes. Beach cat and dinghy sailing, yes. But I don't wear the common inflatables. I wear either a whitewater-specific PFD or a Hero Waterwear inflatable. What you do not want is:

• Auto-inflatable. If it inflates while you are under the boat you will not be able to swim out. This has happened too many times. They also snag on everything when inflated.
• A jacket with gadgets attached. A light. A PLB. A radio. They will snag on ropes, and much worse, lines when the boat flips. You want something clean and simple, with no snag points.

 I was asked to test a HERO some years ago, and it has become a favorite. It's comfortable, better than a fixed PFD. Unlike an inflatable, it is not a snag machine when inflated. In fact, it is the smoothest, least snag-prone jacket I have ever found. It is just as effective (turning and flotaion) as standard inflatable PFDs.

 

Not in the way paddling. 

 

Pops you right up, even if starting with an intentional inverted kayak capsize. It contains some foam, so it can be worn on manual and will still provide some flotation.

 

Easy to deflate.  Standard oral inflation, backed up by foam, should you go in more than once in a day (which kayaking and dinghy racing are not that unlikely).

 My one recommendation is to pre-wet it on really hot days. The cooling effect is very nice.

Hero Waterwear 

Homebuilt Wood Lathe

 Well, not quite.

This winter I've gotten into machining and shop stuff. Metal lathe. Milling machine. Improvements to many shop tools. Learned to weld (I bought the machine several years ago but didn't get enough practice to get good at anything other than straight passes on 1/4-inch plate required for certain oil tank floor repairs).  Originally I was thinking about sailboat modifications/inventions/repairs, but the shop has taken on a life of its own.  

I rebuilt the wood lathe I was given in middle school. I was a piece of junk from the back of a 1974 Popular Mechanics (cheap American junk, don't blame the Chinese). Dissatisfied with it's performance, this winter, I replaced the tool rests (made several new shapes and sizes), tool rest banjo (the new one, made from channel, is many times more rigid), tail stock quill (snapped--increased the quill size, improved the adjustment, and increased the center diameter from 3/8-inch to 1-inch), ways (lengthened to turn 55-inch spindles, and replaced with thicker walled pipe), built a steady rest (very rigid--based on in-line skate wheels), and most recently, built new ball bearing headstock (far more rigid, 20 times less runout, and much smoother), buile a self-tensioning motor mount (quieter and easier speed changes), all in the quest for improved, precision, rigidity, and reduced noise.  All that remains of the original lathe is the tailstock casting and the ways foot casting. Over 90% replaced, virtually all with home built parts. None of the original moving parts; they either worked poorly or broke. Between welding, the metal lathe, and milling, it seems I can make most things. And retired folk have time (I'm still working part time, barely).

So, the question is, if you replace the head of an ax when it chips, and then replace the handle when it breaks ... is it the same ax? I painted the lathe a new color, in recognition of this rebirth.

 

 

In fact, I've spent very little money on tool and shop upgrades. I bought a cheap Chinese metal lathe with good bones, then adjusted and upgraded that. It can now turn steel t good precision. I added milling set-ups to both the lathe and drill press (they excel at different operations). I bought a really cheap welding machine and tuned that. Between that and a trove of WWII machine tools I inherited from my great uncle, I can make most things. He was a machinist at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria and also family black sheep. I've learned more about him from the tools he used than from family conversation. I don't even know what he looked like, because his image was snipped out of picture albums, including pictures from the wedding of his daughter! After she was married, he went to the store and (figuratively) kept going.  Between me and my Dad, and our experiences with his wife, we know why. No one else talks about him: "We don't talk about Bruno ...".

 

The lathe gained so much weight I had to add a hoist to haul it off the bench into storage. Fortunately, any good sailor has a lot of old pulleys and much rope lying about.

 

Many of my creation contain an odd collection of weldments and machined bits. Some examples ...

• I inherited may dies, in 4 diameters, but only one holder. So I made three more, including guides, mostly from pipe. Rings were cut, bent to diameter, and welded. They were then turned to precise dimensions and then welded together. Tabs were welded on and threaded for handles.  A machinist would turn the rings from solid stock, a fabricator works with what he has.
• Lathe drive spur for soft woods and spaulted logs.  Normally they are milled. Mine was fabricated almost entirely by welding, then hardened and tempered. 
• The center, quill, and shaft for the wood lathe were metal lathe projects. Nothing complicated, simpler than the cannon, really.
• The bandsaw table is used on a daily basis. A lot of steel needed cut, some of it quite precisely. The Porta-Band has power, but the table gives you control. The belt guard was a fun sheet metal project. I learned those skills in middle school. It was bent from an old gas furnace access door, using a 6-inch machinists vice and some angle iron as a break. One piece, with the screws tapped into the headstock. I welded up the miter; one less thing to rattle or shake. I hate stick welding really thin metal. It's so easy to burn-through and so hard to hold an arc at very low amps. Welding up the 3/16-inch plate for the headstock, and the 3-inch channel for the tool rest banjo,on the other hand, were relaxing.
• The radius turning attachment for the metal lathe (for odd-sized pulleys) required turning and milling (on the drill press) of steel. But the square hole for the lathe tool was filed out using WW II square machinists file. It didn't take long and the fit is snug (secure by a machine screw, of course).  

I need a new project. I'll we installing a new solar panel on the boat soon, along with a LiFePO4 battery soon. That might yield something interesting. Look for it in PS, and eventually, perhaps here. (Update. This is done and it's working fine. Go lithium! So much easier to lift into place.)

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Update 5-15-2025. Building a deep hollowing rig for vases. A metal lathe and welding required.

Update 6-29-2025. Added a bowl steady rest, conventional steady rest, and a deep hollowing tool. All home-built, all very rigid.

 

 

Need a Vice?

 Clamp-on vices are never satisfactory. They slip and twist and the surface is scared. They are not strong enough. My solution is a drill press vice mounted to a sheet of plywood. The underside of the sheet has cleats which prevent the vice from twisting or sliding. It also provides a work surface you are unafraid of scaring.

 I had the vice (it normally lives on my drill press at home--oddly enough, to hold metal bits that that are being drilled), but it would only be ~ $40 at Home Depot or on Amazon. Multiple holes allow mounting at 90 degree orientations.

The bolts grab T-nuts, saving time. The sheet can be slipped into the locker for storage.

 Sometimes you can jam a part between dock boards or hold it with Vice-Grips, but sometimes you need both hands plus the firm grip that only a solidly mounted vice can provide.

Metal Lathe -- Concave Radius Turning Attachment

 Small radius curves, like the Wheel thimbles and small pulleys are turned using a form tool; a chisel ground to the desired profile. But with metals and small lathes this becomes impractical from a tool pressure perspective at about 0.10" to 0.25", depending on the metal, and about 0.50" for plastics. You can turn larger radius curves in a few other ways:

• Freehand, with a special chisel, like on a wood lathe. The chisels are small and it is very slow on metals. It is also difficult to make repeatable parts.
• Remove most of the material with standard tooling, then smooth it up with a large rat tail file. Tricky.

Or you can use a radius attachment. However, most are made for convex curves (which are much easier to free hand and/or make with conventional tooling), and those that will turn convex won't do deep curves, such as a low friction ring or wheel thimble. So I made my own. 

It covers 11/16-inch to 2-inch and up to 1-inch past the pivot deep. Enough for my needs. 

Somehow it reminds me of one of the robots on the old MST 3000.

It looks dead simple, but it must be very rigid, very compact, and quite precise, so it took a good many steps:

• Careful band saw work
• Milling a slot
• Facing and turning a rod down 
• Concentric boring
  
• Threading several times
• A square hole
• Indexed milling of the hex at the top 
• Fitting the bearing surfaces so that it turns smoothly but with no flex
• Parkerizing of some parts for rust prevention
• Grinding the custom chisel
  

It replaces the tool post and is rotated in use by a 6-point socket with a T-handle from above (see below). The chisel is symmetrical to cut both ways. It uses tiny 1/4-inch blank pieces.

 

I made the 1/2-inch drive Tee handle from #4 rebar with some welding and careful grinding. Why waste good rod? It fits perfectly and is used with other setups on the same lathe.

So Far I'm Down (if I had not moved out of stocks) About $450,000 Since Inugeration Day. Wow. That Stings.

 Yeah, I hate politics, but some things need said.

 A trained monkey could handled the economy better. Just hands off. Oh, and I think it's pretty funny that Trump says the last tariff deal with Canada was terrible ... when he was the one that signed it (CUSMA 2018--Google it). Of course, we should know by now he has no use for actual facts, even those he should remember. Did he forget, or was the truth simply not the message he wanted to sell?

 Weird. It makes me feel weird, trying to say a few bucks here and there, when it is evaporating at that rate. But controlling your burn rate never hurts. I spent the morning in the shop welding up some parts for a recycled anchor chain fence. It was relaxing. I'm trying to think of good uses for retired anchor chain for an article, but I don't think this counts. Maybe.

Thankfully, we bought two new cars (both Japanese) a few years ago, so we will have no need to check prices for at least 15 years. We don't drive that much these days. No commute is nice.

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Do I think the tariffs will help in the long run? I think there are reasons not.

• Industry will NOT change production systems for a policy that will very likely change.
• Trump Is unpredictable. He considers it one of his strengths in negotiations, and for his style, I get what he believes. But big business needs predictability. 
• I've never believed in isolation as a cure for anything. Step up and fix the problem. Become competitive at something. Play to your strength.

The value of empire (the US has been leading a non-imperial empire sine WWII--we inherited it from the British) is free trade and worldwide security. We're blowing that. So much for a making America great. We are weakening it. I'm ashamed.

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 Note that these were all conservative arguments. Apparently they are no longer Republican values. And that is really weird.