Decision time

Advise has been coming from all over the place on some extra structure in the 'crash-zone'! Guy has taken some of it on-board and made a decision. For the sake of it, we've today cut some extra frames that will go in-between the bulkheads nearer the bow. We hope to bond and glass them in place tomorrow after the last longitudinal is in place.

Working from the bow to the wide end we're going to finish all the structural bits, and as we've made the keel casing (photo to follow), this is gonna be one of the next sections to complete. Had a few 'real' boat builders look over the area and listened to their advise, now all they need to do is show up for work!

Unfortunately as I'm quite busy at work I cannot get the mast onto the loft floor to get some bits and pieces sorted, the splicing of halyards is something I would like to get done soon, I know just the person! Chain plates have been designed by Guy, the local engineering shop will get a drawing soon. Once we've designed the adjustable forestay and hardware (and the structure etc is done in the boat, including the chain plates) the mast will go up and final measurements will go to North Sails UK for finishing the sail design.

Back to work.............

Bow sprit in place

More accomplished: Longitudinal went into the bow section, bonded and taped, 'floor' on top of that, also bonded and taped. Starting to feel really solid in that area now. Bow sprit support tube bonded in place, now needs a good rub down and clean-up after my messy filling. Support tube needs taping in next.

The aft bonding was heaps neater as there was more room to work in.

We had to run a new centre line to position the sprit. We extend the sprit all the way out and clamped in place as the bonding cured. It's damn close to perfect, I might add.

As we're now going to have an adjustable forestay, (this should give us more control of the rig as we've no backstay) we need to concentrate a little more on more structure in the bow area. The support tube will help for the compression loads we're expecting.

More to follow as we're about to start on the casing for the fin. We are moulding it from glass over the fin itself as the mould, this should be interesting, watch this space.....................

Holey Tubes

We have taken a hole saw to the bow (see above). The over lamiation shaping foam and ply are clearly shown. We played about with height of the exit and have gone for a slightly higher location than originally drawn... the first update to the plans required!

For the glass tube we literally wrapped around the spinnaker pole with a split plastic pipe as our spacer (which may act as our bearing material too) then packaging tape as a further spacer and release material. Was a bit of a bugger to release once the glass had gone off but we managed it by making good use of a couple of jubliee clips to squish each end of the plastic tube once we had removed the spinnaker pole which came out easily. Now to bond in.

Bow Sprit.

The Bowsprit has arrived! 59mm dia. section from Allspars. It will not be the length shown (unless Gerry gets his way). I reckon that the section is marginal for our purposes so we will strengthen the inboard section.



We have been making a tube between the first and second bulkhead today purely as a watertight housing. It is perfectly acceptable just to use a bit of PTFE at each bearing surface instead. I will post on making the glass tube tomorrow.