It’s been more than two years since I’ve updated this site. The LAST POST contained pictures and videos illustrating RUCKLE’s participation in the 2023 WYC Summer Cruise, which started literally days after the first launch. Since then there have been two more launches and the purpose of this “catching up” series is to document some of what’s been going on with RUCKLE since then.

This content is from late Summer 2023. There will be several more “catching up” posts coming soon.

My DYER Dhow has an oak rubrail, and DYER offers a fender, which is a foam cylinder bound with canvas that can be fastened to the rubrail. It protects both the rubrail and whatever the rubrail might scrape against. Initially I chose NOT to install a fender due to my thinking that doing so would compromise the aesthetics of the dinghy. That concern evaporated almost immediately as I constantly worried about the dinghy making contact with RUCKLE’s hull and other boats. And so I installed a fender:

The all-wire main halyard is attached to a wire winch, which is a very old-school system and prone to certain issues. One issue was that the winch simply stopped working on the way back from Buzzards Bay one day. Even though there was to be no sailing that day, due to light winds, I wanted to motor with a raised mainsail, as doing so really keeps the boat stable from side-to-side rocking. So I removed the old winch and halyard and replaced with a new self-tailer with a rope sheet. Here is the old system:

The new winch:

Making a template for the new screws:

Plugging the holes from the old winch:

Transferring the new hole pattern to the mast:

Installation complete: