BigBlog

Oh my how time flies.

Sorry no update since Christmas. Well we have been busy; we got a good bit of work done over the Christmas break.  Although we are not getting so much help from the boys these days, they both are earning money elsewhere so the need is not so high. It is cheaper for us but of course may take us longer to finish.  So the dagger boards are both made.  The next thing for them is to be painted. Allan wants to have a go himself on this we do have some equipment, all we need at present is Allan to get the paint, hersquo;s been looking at it but needs to make a decision.  The dagger board casings have been basically made they are what the dagger boards sit inside, they are enclosed (watertight hopefully) casings.  they are made to fit the shape of the dagger boards, this was not easy, had to be kerfed and the shape held by clamps and then glassed to hold their shape.  So they are on hold for now.  We have moved on to do the back seat in the cockpit, some of this we glued up in position so as to make sure it would fit, as it fits onto a structural bulkhead.  We then lifted it down with Nathans help to the bench to glass it.  On the top of the seat the lsquo;travellerrsquo; sits.  This is a track with an attached block allowing more controlled adjustment of the sail.  Due to this the surface has to be much reinforced, apparently there is the equivalent of 2 tons on this.  Some put wood in with glass over the top Allan was worried about rot, so went for many many layers of glass, took us quite some time and litres of resin.  What else have we done, the hot water system has gone in, this is a plastic tack, that is covered with foam for insulation, we have put in in the cockpit under where the helm is.

Well thatrsquo;s it for now Allan is at present in Norway, played launch the rocket so no building for a few weeks. Whew a break for me!

I hope you all had a good Christmas and we wish you all the best for 2012.

It's been a while since I updated the blog.  But really there has not been too much to tell, not that we have not been working.  Oh yes plenty of hours have been going on up in the cat shed.  Our time log (yes Allan keeps a time log and graph to go with it) keeps going up.  It's the furniture you see as others have told us before it's a big time sink.  We too can only agree!  But we can see a light at the end of the furniture tunnel.  Most is now done and glassed in too, what's left is the cockpit back seat and the helm station.  In fact as it's the summer holiday and both Daniel and Nathan are off until end February, we will have to think up jobs they can now do maybe they can start some of the fairing.  This will be a new job. So we don't know what to expect there. Basically it's like car bogging, putting stuff on then spending hours sanding it off.  The other new thing we can tell you about is Allan has started to make the dagger boards.  What are those you ask?  Well there are two one on each hull and they are a bit like a rudder cross keel or even like the fins on a surf board, they reach down into the water and the other half is up on the deck of each hull, so they can be pulled up or down as you wish.  From what I understand (which is not much) they act as stabilizers to help the boat not skate too much on the water.  The making of them is going to be very time consuming, would have been good to have mounded ones. They are a combination of foam and balsa the foam is laminated together and then glued like a jigsaw to the balsa, the pictures will show you what I mean.  Then to get the curved shape, Allan routes a long line and then routes that out and then sands to the correct shape.  Then it is glassed over the top with a few layers. And that's only a quarter done. One side of one dagger board.   At least it's not been too hot so far this summer.