Category Archive

With the hull sanded back to the laminate, we needed to prepare the hull for laminating. First thing to do was to mask the painted hull, so we didn’t contaminant the hull any more than we had. The real risk with doing this is you can end up causing impact as you sand and repair by impacting the surrounding area.

When we refitted the boat, we decided that the bowsprit and boom were in ok shape, not brilliant but ok. The pole in particular has started to take a bit of a battering, and the resin coating was flaking off. As we are stuck in a hard lockdown in Ireland and no sailing is likely for a while, T-Bear decreed … Read More

In practice this didn’t work so we reverted back to the previous system. More thought required. On faceplate we follow articles by Thomson Boat Works who customise 505s and noticed this one about an auto-adjusting mast ram: Thomson Boat Works As we are suffering from Covid Lockdown boredom and the fact the pole is finished we decided to see if … Read More

We were sailing in after a good day’s sail, last year, in light conditions, but with gusts coming over the top of Howth Harbour wall. In fairness we had switched off a bit, came out of a tack heeled over, were bearing away to avoid a metal nav mark when a gust hit the top of the rig. We were … Read More

When we designed the rig tensioning system we accidentally over powered the system. In trying to cut the power, we realised that there was an opportunity to cut a little bit of windage, so we changed down to an initial 2:1 purchase, from a 3:1, which brought the total power down to a more reasonable 48:1. As the load is … Read More

This a republish of a series of Faceplant posts, so may not run together well. February 28  · As the weather improves, so does the motivation to go sailing! Sadly with Ireland so far behind the UK with vaccines, it doesn’t look like we are going sailing for a while yet, so the next Lock Down project is sort out the pole, which … Read More

No system is perfect from the get go, so we’ve been steadily iterating and improving the systems on the boat. For example we accidentally, well T-Bear got his maths wrong on the shroud tensioning system which ended up very over powered and almost impossible to ease under normal sailing loads. Nice and easy to pull on though. When we originally … Read More

With the control deck and forward block plate fitted, we could move on to fitting the primary rig controls; Forestay, Shrouds and jib halyard. They all will have their tackle systems up in the bow area and needed to be efficiently lead back to the front of the cockpit. The objective was to create powerful systems but to keep the … Read More

When we took the boat apart we immediately started thinking about how to improve the deck layout and access to the controls. There is always a running debate in Development classes; should you go for a simple deck layout with minimal controls or should you use the ability to control the whole rig but have a more complicated system. Everyone … Read More

After completing the painting, the high quality finish really highlighted the poor state of the racks carbon work. So we added the additional task of redoing the racks. Nick Harvey took on the work to fix and fair the damaged carbon work, but he quickly identified that a lot of the repairs would mean that we couldn’t show the carbon … Read More

How have we done on the 6P’s? This is where we find out whether all of the sanding, filling, fairing and priming was good enough. As Nick kindly pointed out, it isn’t until it is shiny that you see all the defects…. Main consumables: AWLGrip Topcoat in Stars & Stripes Blue and Silver White Associated curing agents and flattening agent … Read More

Spray guns, paint and sand paper…. So after months of part time sanding and then fairing it felt really good to be in a position to actually start putting paint on the boat. While starting to add filler and getting the hull faired was the point that we turned the corner and started moving closer to being finished where as … Read More

Fill and sand, fill and sand, hunt down and fill all those pin holes, repeat! Having sanded the paint off, it is now time to fill and fair the hull, time and age has meant that the hull has dents and dings which need to be filled and the hollow in the transom padded back out. Objectives Fair hull; Fill … Read More

To quote Jim Saltonstall – “Proper Preparation Prevent P*ss Poor Performance”. So first part of the preparation was to talk to boat building expert Nick Harvey to get his advice on how to approach the sanding of the boat. For anyone considering doing this work here is his advice: For the initial sanding use 60 Grit sandpaper, 120 for final … Read More