Episode 9 - Post-Lockdown Progress!

The sound of jingling keys across the length and breadth of our merry land signalled Boris coming round, unlocking us all and releasing us from the worst impositions of the lockdown. For us the real issue has been that the boat has been in the garage in my parents’ back garden; not being able to get at it to do any meaningful work has really limited our progress.

Fortunately the Great Unlocking coincided with the beginning of the Easter holidays. Both Pole and I work in the education sector, so we were finally able to get stuck into the jobs list by working pretty much full time on the boat for the two weeks.

Progress has been good -  we now have most of a boat!

Jobs done include:

-          Struggling for hours to make the beam bolts fit through the beams and engage with the helicoiled holes in the hull. Yes, they are in, but neither of us are satisfied with the job. So we have decided to have another go at this when the hulls are dismantled prior to shipping to Eastbourne.

-          Finalising the assembly and fitting of the hiking racks. These have fitted remarkably well considering that they were made away from the boat and with some dimensions worked out by Pole lying on his front lawn holding a tape measure and waving his legs in the air. It’s probably best that I let him explain the detail of that to anyone who is particularly interested.

 

    [Don't ask!]

      The racks use the original trapeze wires. We have had a little bounce around on them and they seem robust enough and although they still need a bit more bracing (with ropes), we are pretty much satisfied that these will work. We might move them in a little bit closer to the hulls. The gap between the seat and the hull is a little on the wide side, but we propose to sail the boat first before making any adjustments.

The racks also now come complete with full-length cushions coloured in the brightest Donald Trump! Comfort and safety combined!

-        Main and jib halyard reworks. Having a reefable main has meant that we needed to dispense with the main halyard lock on the mast. This has been replaced with a new masthead fitting made by Pole, and a 2:1 dyneema halyard. This seems to work well, although 4mm is just too thin for my delicate hands! We will be upgrading to a beefier bit of string once the mast comes down. The whole lot is cleated on a simple horn cleat on the base of the mast.

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S    Still on the mast, we also fitted halyards for the anti-inversion float and the all-round white navigation light.

The jib halyard originally ran down the inside of the mast and tensioned on a block and tackle that lived inside the mast at the bottom. The system was a bit of a faff to use so the decision was taken early on to switch to an external system. I had hoped to have a system whereby the halyard could be used to both hoist the jib and to actively pull it down when it wasn’t needed. Being able to get rid of the jib without having to go out onto the bowsprit seemed to be a sensible idea. However, the unusual jib tack arrangement on a Tornado plus the jib hanks that we had fitted make this impossible … so out onto the bowsprit it is!

We had also considered fitting a small triangular trampoline in front of the main beam but this is also proving to be problematic as there aren’t really the places to fit the thing to. We’ll think of something else that will be almost as effective.

-          Testing out the mainsail reefing system. We now have a slab reefing system using two reefing lines fitted to the end of the boom. The luff end re-uses the Cunningham lines plus a couple of pennants to tie up the baggy bits of sail. The geometry of the sail does mean that we need to get the sail back to the sailmaker to have a couple of eyes fitted into it to take a couple more reefing pennants to keep the sail tidy when it is reefed.

-        New spinnaker and chute. A new (to us) spinnaker arrived once we were able to go and get the thing. Previously we have been using what we suspect to be a Nacra 20 kite generously donated by Stevo at Eastbourne. This kite was way too long in the luff and didn’t work well at all, so a proper Tornado one it had to be. The chute we had was a home made one. It was ok but had suffered through being out in the sunshine all last year. A new one – also home-made and in glorious Donald Trump orange fits better and seems a bit more reliable.



We had real hassles getting the spinnaker up and down last season, but an afternoon of fiddling with the downhaul system has given us a system that although not faultless, is an awful lot better than it was.

Family commitments and a safety boat duty mean that I cant do anything more this week. Pole is focussing on getting the solar panel mounted and I have some bolts to get machined back at work next week. We are hoping to have boat down to Eastbourne on the 24^th April where we will get the final sailing-critical jobs done. We might be able to get out on the water, but I think we will probably have to accept that it wont happen until the following weekend.