FL14 "Lake Dreamer" launched at last!

[Mike Adams]

"My God, it actually floats...!" was my comment yesterday when "Lake Dreamer" was finally launched
- two months after completion. The weather could have been better this weekend,
but I'm not complaining - the lakes have now risen to a much healthier level following a spell of good rain.
We took "Lake Dreamer" to Lake Burrinjuck, about 85km from my home in Canberra.
This lake has a shore line of around 650km and holds twice as much volume of water as Sydney Harbour!
However, it is a long, narrow lake with plenty of arms and reaches providing reasonably sheltered conditions,
so is ideal for small boats.

Here the boat is on the ramp, about to touch water for the first time:


But of course you must have a naming ceremony first!
My 15 year-old daughter Kim did the honours and threw a glass of champagne over the bow.
(Kim has Down Syndrome, so this was a BIG event for her):


"Did I do it right?!"


The rest of the champagne was enjoyed by the crew! (Me on the far right, standing, with my wife Lorraine
next to me and my son Sean in front. Next to Lorraine is Sean's young lady (another Kym, but spelt differently)
who helped out with sanding the boat and preparing for paint, and her parents, Steve and Sue - Steve was in the navy and sails a lot, so he was particularly keen to see the launch):


First ride at WOT!
Hey COTTONTOP, check out the cap! (For info everyone else, when Cottontop launched his OD18,
he wore a cap I gave him when I visited him and his wife Shella in Florida. He gave me this cap and
I promised to return the gesture when my boat was launched!):


Lorraine enjoys the view from the bow - a smooth ride even at WOT:


After I had my play, Sean took the boat for a run, which gave me the opportunity to take some interesting pictures.
Here, the throttle is at idle and you can see that with four people in the boat there is heaps of freeboard left:


But this is how she runs at WOT!
Despite the very high bow attitude, the boat does not feel in the least bit unsafe and handles well,
although I don't think I would like to try WOT with just me sitting in the rear seat!
There's no speed sensor on my portable Sonar, so I couldn't measure the speed, but we all reckon it was at least 6 kts
and maybe even 7 or 8:


Here, Sean demonstrates a full-tiller turn at WOT, just to show how stable the boat feels:




I also have a couple of short MPG videos of the launch and moving at WOT, but I don't have a
separate website and I'm not sure how to let you view them as I can't load them on the Bateau site.
If anyone can help with this I'd be pleased to show them to you.

I am very pleased with this little boat and its performance.
Thanks again to Jacques and Bateau and all of you who helped with tips and encouragement.

Mike

[cimmaronjim]

Awesome Mike!!
I haven't been around much, is the bimini top a homemade creation or did you buy it commercially, if so where?

[fishingdan]

Congratulations Mike. An excellent job and day everyone involved will remember forever.

Dan

[skiabq]

Great job!

That color with the wood trim looks great and that top is really slick.

[ks8]

Excellent. And a great job of the naming ceremony!

Thanks for the pictures...

ks

[MadRus]

Excellent job Mike. Watched you all along and really admired the careful craftsmanship you put into her. Nice!

[odras]

SWEET!!!!!! A fine job, I also like the bright gunnels! Really nice to see the whole family involved!

One comment try a hydrofoil, Dolfin, stingray....... That stern digging in is very inefficient robbing top end and wasting gas!

Still areal sweet ride!!!!!!!!

Bill

[fishingdan]

Its a displacement hull Bill. I am not sure it would be beneficial.

Mike: I had the same thought at Bill in regards to wasting fuel. Experiment with different throttle settings. I bet you will find that you will reach hull speed at around 50% throttle.

[Dukydo]

Mike... I am so impressed. You have not only done a fine job of building an already sweet design, but you have invested a lot of imagination and netted yourself something that both you and Bateau can be proud of.

Can't wait to see your next boat.

[Mike Adams]

Thanks, guys, I appreciate the nice comments.

Jim:
It's a standard off-the-shelf two-bow bimini. (You can buy three and four-bow biminis for bigger boats). Can't remember now how much it cost me, but it wasn't very expensive and it just so happened that the colour matched the boat! One of the reasons I decided to put a gunwale deck on this boat was so that I had a fixing point for the bimini....

Bill and Dan:
I had wondered if there was some kind of trim device that would correct this, but I think it is probably a result of the rocker designed in this boat together with a relatively high power pushing at the stern (the 7.5HP outboard is the max Jacques recommends for this boat). In the photos, the motor is positioned a few notches up to make it easier to negotiate shallow water at the shoreline, but I did try putting the motor to the maximum down position and it didn't seem to make any difference to the way it runs at WOT. Also, it doesn't really take off until you get past about half throttle, when the stern then digs in and off you go - feels really ! As I said, the boat does not feel the least bit unsafe in this attitude, although I found that I needed to throttle back when I saw the wake of another boat as it will pound over the wash if left at full throttle.

As for gas, I think this thing will run on the smell of an oily rag. We ran the boat for about four hours all told over the weekend and the gas gauge indicated only a couple of litres less than when we started!