We Are Building A New Boat:
The Com-Pac 16 Long Boat is going to be popular. It's going to have a variety of motors from diesels to oars. Not to mention sails. It may be even more popular than the original boat. The Com-Pac 16 were great boats, but they only did one thing and that's sail. The Long Boat and Skiff are going to be multi-useful doing many different things. Fishing, exercise machine and sailing are only a few. Maybe doing them all in one outing. We are taking orders.
Why Should We Build A Com-Pac 16 Utility?:
I remember all those years in the Marine Corps when we were aboard ship somewhere in the World and we needed to go ashore. I was normally on an aircraft carrier and they are big and couldn't get to a dock for liberty call. We anchored off and had to take a small boat ashore if we wanted to get off the ship. After months at seas, everyone wanted to get of the big boat for a while. Those little boats were called Liberty Launches. They were wood, painted gray and they were heavy. They had diesels and they felt like a rock even in rough seas. Sometimes if you wanted to get back to the big ship, we had to repair the boats when and where they broke. I liked those Liberty Launches.
The Com-Pac 16 Utility is going feel like a Liberty Launch. The newest configuration is going to move the Center Console to the Option list and a standard feature is going to be a six-foot long seat setup long-ways in the middle of the boat. We will have more storage with the long seat. The boat is going to look a little like the boat on the front of the Jamestown Distributors Catalog below.
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A Diesel For A Com-Pac 16 Utility:
The big question is can we pull water skiers with this boat? The answer is maybe. The little 1GM10 is only 160 pounds and it is sitting over the ballast. This boat might have a cover for the engine that's also a seat and we might keep the rudder and tiller as is. We might keep our center console we purchased for this boat for another boat. We were thinking that if we put the larger 15hp diesel in this boat, would it work? I think the answer is maybe.
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Getting The Mast Up On A Legacy:
I needed to take a boat to a show and I decided on a Legacy. I didn't remember that a Legacy mast was taller than our standard 16 mast. I needed to lift the mast several times to make adjustments. Picking up the mast wasn't fun and I decided I could use a mast raising system. I designed a quick one that uses a yoke and the trailer winch to lift the mast. The yoke stays in place while trailering and sailing. It works well, but I bet Gerry at Com-Pac could design a better one. I suggested he do so and sell it as an aftermarket installation. You can't leave the boom connected with the new system, but I don't think many people do that anyway.
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Cheap Fishing Machine:
We have been making some progress in all this heat. 97 degrees is hot and we have had too many days that hot this summer. Anyway, our converted sailboat is almost finished. It still needs to be painted and a bimini made for those hot summer days next year. I think we will do the paint job this winter. A black hull with a tan deck is on my list of things to do. We should be testing the boat in the water in August. We will take pictures.
Some of our older CP-16s with the wood cored decks are too expensive to restore. We are currently doing one of those boats as a center console like the boat below. It will have the console and we think a 9.9hp with remote controls. We will show pictures as we progress.
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