Juneau Winter Splash
(and Crash)
March 10, 2000
Greg launches the "Sea Rat"...
as Bruce is carted off to the emergency room!!!
Juneau Winter Splash
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as Bruce is carted off to the emergency room!!! |
Instant boats arrive by the truckload!
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the lineup begins...the blue Platt Montfort geodesic is a recent addition... |
Nancy Long arrives with her Cartop Dory |
Unfortunately, Bruce Simonson, when helping to unload Nancy's dory from the top of her car, slipped and fell on some loose gravel, fracturing his patella (kneecap) in 5 places! He was in serious pain, and the flashing red lights and ambulance got us off to a slow start. This is NOT what a knee is supposed to look like! |
Bruce is amazingly cheerful as he is hauled off to the hospital, urging us to go on with the splash, but "beware the Ides of March"! |
Greg Chaney's "Sea Rat" experiment launches for the first time! Greg came up with this unusual shape, under the 1 sheet constraint. The joints were laced together with seine twine, like an old Arab dhow, then filleted. |
Zac Pease and I launch Zac's Wacky Lassie for the first time! Zac designed the "custom scalloped" deck edges. He actually wanted it to look like shark's teeth at first, but I talked him out of that one! |
The first paddle... 
The pool is a safe place to experiment with the limits of stability |
Jump Dad! |
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The Sea Rat goes to "rescue" a swamped Wacky Lassie (designer notes the Wacky Lassie rides quite low in the water with 2 kids when swamped) |
Successful recovery by the Sea Rat |
As usual, the boats spend much time swamped! That is one of the objectives: getting kids comfortable around swamped boats, and learning first-hand about stability in a safe place |
Nancy Long practices sculling her dory |
The Wacky Lassie can be reboarded quite dry by a child (with more practice) |
The Wacky Noodles float her just high enough when swamped with 1 small passenger... |
Contact: Fritz Funk (fritzf@alaska.net)
