Geam

Bulkhead between saloon and what is termed as 'the hallway' has been installed. Don't know what else to call this area where the companionway steps will be. The 'hall' will enclose an aft sea berth to stbd, heads to port, engine, workbench to port, and a chart table on top of the engine cover. There is also a navigation area with a radar screen and GPS built into a locker and a rather large compass which can be viewed through a pothole from the steering well.

A friend in Eastern Norway has his Fisher 37 for sale. He moored it alongside the original refurbished Colin Archer for some 'mugshots'. Not often you see these two yachts in the same photo. 

George

Wood-burning stove and saloon table produced in last few days, also aft sea berth which is to on the starboard side.

George 

Slow progress recently due to unusually good weather here in S-W Norway. Have constructed some interior detail which will eventually be painted in the green colour used in the present Colin Archer RS1 afloat in Norway as shown in the lower photo. Saloon deck will be planked later  in oak-stained pinewood.

George

Rudder servo in place to STDB of the steering well/cockpit.

Spring tensioning pulleys/winch drum compensators fitted P&S abeam the jib winch. Hope they work as intended!

Will start on some interior fittings/furninshing soon.

George

Not exactly ground breaking tech, but there's now a winch (6-turns Graupner Regatta Eco Speed) installed abeam the main mast position. 

George

Apropriate beams/stringers have been cut away and a mainsail control winch has been fitted abeam the cockpit/steering well. The winch is a 4-turn Krick  unit  nr. 1004MG. The mainsheet will run via a brass guide tube, through the side of the well, up to a ring on the mizzen mast and  to the end of the main boom.  The winch drum will be fitted later in the build!

George

The cross beams and stringers are in place now. Some need to be cut away to give access to the hull internals.  Deck shown, loosely placed on hull. R/C gear locations to be planned next. Then I'll have a good think about whether or not to try to build an interior around the R/C installtions. It will take some time to achieve I fear.  

I have made some small adjustments to the genoa sheet runs above deck. A new, additional sheet block has been added further forward in an attempt to give more downards pull at the genoa clew and thereby tighten the genoa leech a bit. Under sail, the top section of the genoa often has too much twist and the wind spills out and does not provide thrust -just flutter!

The YouTube videos can be seen by writing "Model Fisher 34 motorsailer 1/12th scale".

The Billing Boats Colin Archer RS1 is now up from the cellar store and the build is underway....but at a slow speed-ahead.  

George

Sorry about the wrinkley main and mizzen sails in previous photo. This is due to sails being stowed under the sail covers. The nylon sailcloth did not seem to like that too much. Won't use the covers very often. Reefed and covered just for the motoring tests.

Bare for info' : I have by some small miracle managed to open a YouTube account and 'beam up' a few videos of the Fisher on the water. The quality is not that good but I see that in many posts. I have not managed to edit/cut the longest sessions, so it's necessary to jump through the videos a bit if they get boring. There's no music, but plenty of 'grinding' winches and 'buzzing-motor' sounds to get on with.  I am very pleased with the function of the two-winch genoa system. It works better than I'd imagined. A bit more sheet travel is needed to be able to sheet in the genoa å little bit more and I'll work on that when time allows. 

The videos can be found by writing "Model Fisher 34 motorsailer"  on Google. Probably also by writing in YouTube too, but I have not actually tried that yet!

George

Admiralty assisted  trip to a local lake today. Not much wind, but nice Wx and 17*C . Fisher sailed very well in fact in almost no wind. The family 'film crew' were there too, but not got any of their photos or film yet- Posting here a couple of poor photos from video on my PC screen. 

Just a few cosmetic tweeks to do on the yacht before I close down the Fisher production unit and go over to the Colin archer.  Not planning to write much about that as so many people have already built it and Carsten and Andreas are already active on this site with their Billing Boats CA models.  

George.

The new raked-back fin and wing keel did the trick. The logitudinal CoG was just right. The bows came up a bit -and the stern down of course- so there's no need to re-paint the waterline either.

Son-in-Law took photos and grandson wizzed about with his drone. The'll beam down photos in a few days. The fin shown here will be 'streamlined' a bit by adding a sheet aluminium cover. I made sail covers last week and reefed/stowed the sails but they came out very wrinkled so won't be using the covers in future.

The problem with battery capacity seems to have been solved by using dedicated Rx batteries and no BEC. So two 4.8v/2000 mAh batteries in parallel now power the Rx. 

I'll post a few new sailing photos when I get them and with some family help I'll try to post some video on YouTube.  That will then be the end of this 18 month scratch-build report. 

Hi -just for info'.....

I've been studying photos of static Fishers recently and although my model floats slightly nose down I think that an additional problem is that the waterline mark has been painted too high at the stern. Quite far into the  build I was convinced that the yacht would be too heavy and it looks like I have tried to compensate for this visually by painting on the waterline mark too high. I remember also that I was expecting the model  to be stern-low!  I was compensating for a problem which wasn't there! This reminds me of the saying, "If it's not broken, don't fix it!"

The new, aft-raked keel will be fitted today and ready for a L-CoG test tomorrow, Sunday. The forecast is for sunshine,+4*C and almost no wind.  Later, I may have to consider if I can scrape off some dark blue paint from amidships to the stern and then when the weather and temp. allows, I will paint over with white. Hope I can do a decent job of it. The white is sprayed on acrylic with clear acrylic gloss on top. BUT, before I 'fix' the waterline mark, I'll wait to see if it's really necessary! 

George 

Son-in-law beamed me a photo of the first 'departure'. I was switching on the Roam3 video camera.

Grandson was there too and took some drone video so that will appear on YouTube when he has time to help me set up an account.

Two 4.8v/2000mAh in parallel -now connected to the Rx. No BEC. 

Yacht floats slightly nose down so will move the keel a bit aft and make it longer to give even more righting-moment. Might make a new,more streamlined single-leg keel-  a bit nicer for the trout to look at in the summer.

George

Launch went well yesterday. BUT after 5 minutes sailing, the voice warning sounded for low reciever battery voltage. I could not hear what the warning was 'saying' until too late. The receiver shut down!  After about 15 minutes 'free sailing' the Fisher turned for the shore just as my son-in-law was removing his jeans to take swim in the very cold water! I had waders on and waded out to meet the yacht as it sailed shoreward. 

When I got back home and switched everything on again it all worked perfectly! Do not know what was wrong but I hope it was just that the BEC on the speed controller could not supply enough power to the Rx due to 3 winch servos and a digital rudder servo. I was not using the R/C much at all during sailing so can't really understand why. The ESC BEC is supposed to supply 5v and 5A. The servos use 0.5A idle and 1.8-2.2 under load so I hope this is the cause - and nothing more serious!

I have now fitted a dedicated receiver battery 4.8v 2000mAh and may even put in an extra one in parallel before the next test-sail.

Did not manage to get photos other than from my Roam 3 action cam -fitted into the wheelhouse door opening. Son-in-law will send me his photos later  also while I was wearing waders he says!  Posting a screenshot from action-cam just after launch.

Too much wind and too cold for testing during the next few days, but doing more tests at home.

George