WOW - that's us in WoodenBoat Magazine!

we are so delighted to be mentioned in WoodenBoat Magazine, the bible of the Wooden Boat Religion! After all, what else wold you call a volunteer boat shop? We (used to) gather once a week, work together to create new community solutions, particularly for youth...that's my idea of church anyway.

if you missed it search woodenboat.com and click on the free read of the April May issue, page 32

Meanwhile the boatshop is necessarily quite except for me! doesn't mean nothing is happening however. First a quick recap of how our World Championship Indoor SeaFlea Races went in January at the Toronto Boat Show.

Adding the 9.8 HP Tohatsu engines turned into a major project. Tohatsu had donated two 9.8's for our summer boatshow programmes and they turned out to make such a difference in performance that we decided to do propane conversions so we could use them at TIBS. Tohatsu sent one off to a company in MN that specializes in conversions and after two months they shipped the results to us. It didn't work and it wasn't safe for an indoor venue. It arrived a few days before opening day of the show.

Here's Bernie and Steve redesigning the whole system to make it safe and reliable:

Steve and Bernie on 9.8

Here we are at TIBS with Steve and Bernie plus John Adam from Tohatsu working on an installation. the tuning of the 9.8 was new territory and John mastered it!

plus John and Scott setting up another.

remember me? time goes faster than a sea flea...

Last Post (just kidding) was about our annual Picton Raid - the volunteer's favourite out of town event. It has actually been quite busy since then although reality is that many of our volunteers disappear during the summer onto their boats and cottages. Here's what's been happening.

Canada Day Parade in Glen Williams

 One of the best small town parades around with 40 to 80 floats depending on the year. The parade is some years longer than the hamlet! This year we took the Hunter with Neal's family on board in the parade and a group of us also ran the paddle carving activity in front of Barb's Glen Fitness on the parade route. The parade was over by 1 pm but we still had kids carving paddles at 4!

team trains future boatbuilders

Mayor Rick ready to launch ships

My chum Dave in Pipe Major position

K&C booth at Gymn

Dileas does Canada Day (again)

Opti Magic!

One of our volunteers (Steve Earle) is involved in a kids-at-risk sailing programme near his cottage on Lake of Bays. Last fall he brought two bedraggled Opti's, that were about to be scrapped, into the shop to see if we could work magic on them. While Steve did most of the work, George and the rest of us plus some of the kids in our shop also did lots of work on them too.

When he took them away to head for the camp he kept saying his heart was going to break because they would be trashed in 2 days.... In fact what happened was they were so pretty they became the sail of choice among the kids. We received these shots of appreciation!

 ACBS Gravenhurst Show!

Every year our club gives us a great spot near the water where we can display the good stuff achieved in or volunteer boatshop including the skiffs built by the kids, boats restored by the volunteers and the last few years our sea fleas. This year we had docks near the booth which allowed us to demonstrate the sea fleas as an advanced sample of our performance at TIBS 2019.

My friends Doug & Lorraine with newly restored SeaBird

SeaFleas, mahogany and steam

Matt, Roger, Ron and Micheal - end of day

tight running like TIBS

That's all for this post but I'll be back way sooner next time!

Bit of a catch up here...St John River, Fla

I was away Mar and half of April so while George did a great job of sending out a weekly story of what was going on - it didn't make it into the blog. (I just haven't figured out how to do certain things - like that)

Ron and I did take Dileas, our 1947 Hunter, on the ACBS St John River Cruise however and as the forecast was for heavy rain on day one of the cruise I decided to whip up a convertible top for Dileas.

$35 Bimini from Wallmart!

Looks elegant from a distance

cruise fleet at Palatka Fla

Big bridge at Palatka

 We ended up driving to a couple of events as weather was too wet. Last two days were great and we saw lots of gators including some big ones. Hunter ran great and kept us safe.

Muskoka Sea Flea's Chris Taylor releases amazing new video of World Championship Indoor SeaFlea Races!

check this out, Chris and his son Aiden were on hand for the Thursday test day and the Sunday Race event. His son Aiden ran one of the boats with a GoPro on the bow. Very cool footage. See if you can spot the moment where he gets literally cool....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgptMTGUi0c&t=4s

Don't know if copy and paste works with moving targets like this around but we'll know soon.

Race event T shirts and posters still available.

Front view is quite stunning....

 What a handsome group shot, how could you not want one of these shirts!

back view is about the famous event!

 Pretty sure you can just make out the poster at the top of the blog!

They can be purchased on our website apparently so give that a try. Or if you are in the Glen, you can buy them at our little store in the Beaumont Mill Antique Market.

Prices: T shirts $20 each including a poster, Poster only is $10 each. Sea Flea kits are $1495.00 FOB The Glen and should be available in May....

K&C's Famous Raceboats SeaFleas the first four

TIBS is over and the "World Championship Indoor SeaFlea Races" 2018 is in the history books where it surely belongs! First ever indoor powerboat races on the world's largest indoor lake. I was blown away by the quality of the support we received from the greats of teh boat racing world - it was clear that few of the K&C volunteers had the background in racing needed to quickly understand how to maneuver in such tight quarters so I made one key call to Randy Milligan who I know from raceboat events. His dad and uncle raced and knew Dave Norton very well.

Randy connected me to Norm Woods (Miss Canada & Motorsports Hall of Fame) and to Andrew Fralick (TORC). I also called Chris Taylor of Muskoka SeaFlea fame who brought experienced drivers to the show.

From these connections came Harry Wilson (Miss Canada), Sue and Steve Huff, Mark Rotharmel, Erik and Christian Luksep, Scott Robertson, Roger Duncan, Emily and Patrick Overbury, Cam Newlands, Aiden Taylor, Sarah Renton.

To all these amazing folks I send my great thanks for jumping into such an unlikely proposition and givin' 'er hell.

Here are the Famous Raceboats SeaFleas....

Mini Gas-Hopper

Mini Miss Canada (with permission from Harry Wilson)

Mini Miss Supertest

and Mini Canadiana

Now some action shots:

Emily Overbury holds off Norm

Norm's smooth flawless style set him apart

Scott really got it going too

Scott is flying

turns were really hard to maintain without cavitation

Dock crew Bruce, MB, Scott, Ron

Meanwhile back on the K&C booth in the south foyer our core team of boatshop volunteers also had a great show and lots of fun. The carving benches were a total hit again!

chips are flying

coaching by Steve, George and Anton

Toss N Save Hats very popular this year

and then it was Sunday night....

fun

First test day on Lake Wow!

Good morning Folks!

Yesterday was our first time with our whole sea flea fleet on the Worlds Largest Indoor Lake at the Toronto Boat Show. Early test runs showed a surprising new complication which it is still unclear as to cause. On hard acceleration or overly aggressive turns the engines develop cavitation (prop spinning in bubbles with no traction) which drop you off plane.

As our test drivers were all very skilled with a long history of racing (except moi of course) techniques were developed to minimize this tendency. In today's tests we are going to try some different props. Here are a few of the pictures by Grant and Harry.

Steve and the Laying on of Hands

Mini Miss Canada gets wet

Eric and Wayne ready Miss Canada

MB ready for first run

The first raceboat lap ever on an indoor lake?

Roger getting ready for high speed run

Wayne explaining racing to George

Norm Woods finally gets to drive Miss Supertest

Norm gunning her

highest level of skill in action

Eric flyby

MB just had to go again (and again)

Norm flyby

Mini Miss Candiana rigged and ready

Harry captures sea flea racing greats