Welcome to the blog and Photo a Day of Arel English. Relax and enjoy!
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Photo a Day: Day 61. This is a photo of the boats I’ve been working on the past few days. As you can see, the weather is much nicer than it was the past couple days.
The boats lined up on the grass are sailboats made by motor boat company Boston Whaler, called Harpoons, or Poons as we like to call them. Poons were a bizar half attempt by Boston Whaler to get into the sailboat business in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and were featured as the example boat in US Sailings horrible ‘Start Sailing Right’ instructional video series.
Harpoons are an awkward boat because of their weight to size ratio. They are to heavy to beach launched or put into the water by hand, but are to small to leave on a mooring in the water without worrying about them capsizing every time there is a storm. Harpoons came in three sizes, 4.6 meters (15’), 5.2 meters (17’) and 2.6 meters (20.3’). We only had 4.6’s and 5.2’s.
Poons were also designed the same way as the Boston Whaler motor boats, with a compressed foam core, which made them “unsinkable.” Unfortunately, sailboats have different requirements and tradeoffs than motorboats, and the compressed foam “unsinkable” design didn’t make much sense for a sailboat because of the added weight, and the fact that sinking isn’t much of a concern for a dingy that will never be very far from shore.
Finally, the motorboat in the picture is a 17’ Boston Whaler Motorboat, and the red building in the upper right corner of the shot is the sailing barn.
Photo a Day: Day 60. We took a boat trip today. It was cold, but it’s never to cold to go boating.
