Rudolf van de Brug

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Jan Schippers & Rudolf van de Brug building a Visionarry named. . .

'Blind Date' is the result of a very specific set of requirements. Jan Schippers, the boats owner takes blind people sailing in his Iroquois cat as well as using it extensively to take family and friends cruising along the Dutch coast. The Iroquois is a great boat (I owned and cruised one for 5 years) but Jan needed something bigger, easier to handle and roomier. It also had to be fast. Blind people don't like sailing slowly any more than sighted people.

Rudolf van de Brug is building 'Blind Date' and writes;

"Outside half of ww hull is glassed on the outside(2 layers of 300g/m2 uni). Yesterday we started glassing the other half which was tied to the ceiling waiting it's turn. Delayed delivery of the glass caused us to start planking the other half before glassing the first part. So now we have to move one part from the mold and the other onto it. There is not enough room to simply lay everything on the floor, so we have to use the third dimension.

We are all impressed with the curves of the hull. It will not take a lot of bog to fair, I can only see two hollows. They will need fairing. Both are between mold 0 and 1 in the deck radius, due to tapering of the planks. The deck radius is rapidly decreasing towards the bow between those molds. It will be easy enough to fair using a blade of an old hand saw to take the curve.

I am very pleased with the choice of using staggered butts on the cedar. It means you have planks short enough to handle alone. The butt assures easy scribing when fitting tapered planks, because of the relative short length and also because the butt defines the exact position of the plank. Joining proved to be easy without using butt blocks. For temporary fastening we used 32mm staples, tacking over matches for easy removal. I can not imagine a faster working method.

Checked your website, the restyling of hg is impressive. I like it very much and so does my wife. Would like to build one for ourselves in the future. I read your reaction to compliments on the restyling:" the credit goes to Mark". Credit to whom credit is due, but I hope it makes you feel good to see how the concept is accepted as appearance is improved.

Regards,

Rudolf."

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