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Sailing around the world on a Sunfish - non stop

16531 Views 86 Replies 50 Participants Last post by bfloyd4445, Oct 28, 2014

weinie

Discussion Starter · Jul 17, 2014 (Edited)

So, a friend's cousin's roommate has this small Sunfish boat behind the barn on his family's farm in Oklahoma. He is willing to give it to me for free! I will have to have it transported home to me in New York.

He said it may need a little work and some parts may be missing. He mentioned it also needs a new sail, mast, rudder, tiller, boom, centerboard, and ropes. The hull is in very good shape... just a few holes in the bottom that need patching.

My plan is to clean it up and to circumnavigate the globe - non-stop. Also, I will need to install a refrigerator to keep beer cool during the journey. What size battery will I need?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Bene505

· #81 · Oct 27, 2014

On my first time around.... I used an 8D truck battery as my anchor, and 16/2 marine wire instead of anchor chain. This had the advantages of some chafe protection without having to use chain. True, the lights were dim when I used all 400' of my rode, but I saved a lot of weight this way.

The second time around I used a battery keel. It work well until I ran aground one night on a submerged sewage pipe. Believe me, the sparks and the sh!t were really flying.

Regards,
Brad

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OPossumTX

· #82 · Oct 27, 2014 (Edited)

shananchie said:
Funny. Since I resumed visiting this site a few months ago, I've had the feeling that a certain number of posters are not really sailors, but people just passing the time on the Internet. No one who has spent significant time on a sailboat could pose these types of questions.

Curses! Found out at last! Before this, the worst thing I've been accused of is sucking eggs and leaving the shells in the nests so it would look like the hens did it.

I was thinking that a Sunfish would make a dandy beer cooler if one were to fill it with ice and beer and put on a deck of foil faced insulation foam. Just lift the edge and grab another cool one whenever the need arises! The mast and master should serve to keep the lid on.

Have FUN!
O'

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rgscpat

· #83 · Oct 27, 2014

The best beer coolers were the styrofoam Snarks.

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bfloyd4445

· #84 · Oct 27, 2014

weinie said:
So, a friend's cousin's roommate has this small Sunfish boat behind the barn on his family's farm in Oklahoma. He is willing to give it to me for free! I will have to have it transported home to me in New York.

He said it may need a little work and some parts may be missing. He mentioned it also needs a new sail, mast, rudder, tiller, boom, centerboard, and ropes. The hull is in very good shape... just a few holes in the bottom that need patching.

My plan is to clean it up and to circumnavigate the globe - non-stop. Also, I will need to install a refrigerator to keep beer cool during the journey. What size battery will I need?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

great idea......my boats have always hyad a reputation of always having ample beer so I often have visitors begging beer on hot summer days....lawyer friends even in the winter..

No refrigerator is necessary just stick to the northern latitudes and keep your brew down below for ballast. Make sure you have a couple of carboys to make more brew when you run low

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bfloyd4445

· #85 · Oct 27, 2014

OPossumTX said:
Curses! Found out at last! Before this, the worst thing I've been accused of is sucking eggs and leaving the shells in the nests so it would look like the hens did it.

I was thinking that a Sunfish would make a dandy beer cooler if one were to fill it with ice and beer and put on a deck of foil faced insulation foam. Just lift the edge and grab another cool one whenever the need arises! The mast and master would serve to keep the lid on.

Have FUN!
O'

went fishing at Pyrimid lake in Nevada one time in a boat that was 1/3 full of ice. It had rained and the owner didn't drain the boat. When we found the ice wethought we would have to abandon the fishing trip but I suggested using a hammer to rough up the ice and just put our beer in the resulting hole. Everyone liked that idea so we went fishing and caught two lahoaton cut throat trout under 24 inches. That was in Feb 1984

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Bene505

· #86 · Oct 28, 2014

rgscpat said:
The best beer coolers were the styrofoam Snarks.

Did that at my 50th birthday party. We put it up on a table, with the sail up at first. We used the aluminum shafts from two Fortress FX125 anchors to provide stability. Positioned down low, they made for a lower CG.

Regards,
Brad

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bfloyd4445

· #87 · Oct 28, 2014

Bene505 said:
Did that at my 50th birthday party. We put it up on a table, with the sail up at first. We used the aluminum shafts from two Fortress FX125 anchors to provide stability. Positioned down low, they made for a lower CG.

Regards,
Brad

what a great idea....the captain ties him/herself to a line off the stern when starting off< tropic start recommended>, then as the beer is consumed enters the sunfish to take more direct command. By this time he/she will likely be seeing lots of mermaids to assist with navigation and other chores.

Short story: Twenty years ago I took a couple of Portuguese friends out stripped bass fishing, one was not long for this world with prostrate cancer. We got out there and being Portuguese they had their own private alcohol home brewed which I must admit was very tasty being a cross between 151 rum and red wine. Soon they began to talk about sailing my searay sundancer to Portugal. I pointed out to them that the searay only help 150 gallons of fuel and that there were no gas stations or port in the middle of the Atlantic. That stopped them for a few seconds until they remembered their heritage and reminded me that Portuguese can sail any place in the world and there people have been doing so since before Columbus. If we run out of gas we will simply rig up a sail and we will make it, this is a fine boat with an outstanding crew...well at this point I was about to resign myself to a long ocean voyage but I decided to make one more comment. I said we only have one more bottle of, in between< pet name for their brew> and a case of beer what will we do when we run out of alcohol. Silence reigned, and they conceded the trip at this time was out of the question. Of course at this point they were planning the next trip during which the rubber dinghy would be towed filled with bottles of , In Between......at this point I gave up

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