ELROW LA ROWE'S MICRO NEWSLETTER
NEWSLETTER #5: ON MICRO Dec. 1984
Your CHRISTMAS present, from us is below! It, won't take much of your time, but Fish
Cat, may just be one power boat that appeals to sailor folk.' Brief holiday fantasizing
can
visualize a fold-down dodger to keep off the sun, or sunning on the bridge deck, or
snooze-
in" in one of the hulls when the fish aren't, biting. Power Cats are 20-30% more
effic-
ient per given HP than std. single hulls.
Mr. and Mrs. Bernie Wolfard of Portland, Ore. are well into their building. Bernie
works
full time, but builds fine furniture in his spare time, and recently finished a homebuilt
airplane. He is also an ex-professional hang glider pilot and manufacturer, and an exper-
enced (6 yrs.) paraplegic. Their Micro will have a door in the cockpit area so he car.
more easily get, in and out of Micro from his inflatable dingy. Marty Stevens will have
his
"DuPont," Micro done by Christmas in Miami, Patricia Giordano admits she got
"hooked" on
Micro--will stop to see mine while on vacation from Mt. Tremper, NY,--probably before
startling hers, and Glen Bennett, LaConner, WA., has no warm place to start, his micro
now,
so is doing a PIROGUE inside during the cold months.
DO I STILL HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? Then send me $2 right now for your 1985 subscription to
the newsletters. It was inevitable, and several builders suggested the necessity of it.
Feel free to flatter me by all signing up for it! This will have to be the last freebie.
I read Bolger's "100 Small Boat Rigs" in Sept,. One doesn't get far into it
without learn-
ing that, type of hull, type of transom, deck design, angle of sheeting, etc. are import-
ant factors. Rigs have to be fitted to the boat or vice-versa, and good alternate choices
are few instead of many. And foresails on stays (jibs) are not efficient unless the mast
and its ripping are engineered to keep the stays taut.
Misc.: Boatbuilder 's Int'l Directory, 512 Viewmont St., Benicia, CA 94510 has ads
covering
everything--supplies, kits, plans, publications, pretty much worldwide. Ramsey of Ft.
Wayne has a lead keel mold to loan to those close enough to make borrowing it practical.
It, is so easy to make that it wouldn't pay to ship it around the country. He used my
meth-
od of sawing a 1-1/2" plank to the keel curve fastened to a heavy plywood base to
form the
keel-shaped bowl, slobbered it with watergrass, and poured--. Using a keel plug in pack-
ed sand can be a problem, as the weight of the lead tends to push itself into the sand on
the edges, and ends up needing a bit of trimming. Int'1 Marine Pub. Co., has recent,
issues
(Camden, Maine) of the Mariner's Catalog for sale cheap--also good for supplies and other
odd and inter sting bits of marine information. Wolfard got terrific marine plywood
price".
from Linnton plywood, 18584 N. W. St. Helens Rd., Linnton, OR, possibly making it
practical
to pay motor freight too. Next, project immediately after mailing this is distributing
names and addresses of plan owners per area.
Anyone for "the controversy"? Friends of Martti the Finn referred to Micro as a
"beer vat",
suitable on small swamp lakes in Florida, must, carry min. 3 tons, Chinese junk."
Wolfard's
friends' view of the plan got "It's real pretty, it's so ugly it's cute and a
ha,ha,ha.
Then I read a man who should have known better, saying "a boat should look like a
boat".
He probably meant that you can't sell boats to a public vaguely informed, but nevertheless
bound by what, Bolger calls "the dory mystic" and I call the "dory
syndrome" of maybe '.he
150 year tiny slice of history to which we belong. His betters would have disagreed with
what a boat should look like--and with each other,--like Ramses II, Alexander the Great,
Columbus, and on the basis of a democratic vote, we would all be in Sampans and Junks--
not all that bad a fate! Dorys were not designed, but evolved, not here, but far back in
history. Public TV on the Danube delta shows fisherman hauling 12' 200 lb. sturgeons into
them so they can get that 12 lbs. of caviar (at $400 a lb. ). So, if you don't, have to
haul
a ton of fish or something in open water under oars you don't need a dory--a very highly
specialized craft. Stacking soldiers in the bottom like sturgeon, Alexander moved his
troops in the same area in the same type boats centuries ago. Not needing all that res-
erve buoyancy (without the fish) the popularity of the dory in our sliver of time is just
maybe mostly a nostalgia trip, and not a good boat, trip. So, if we get more buoyancy than
we will ever need, a wider bottom for stability that flare already has robbed, a larger
rip to move this greater mass and other "apply money" solutions, somehow it
seems that the
facet of function in beauty has been too much diminished--and wrongfully so if it serve.;
non-technical popular fashion instead of true boat design. In short,, MICRO is lovely!