Batten waste

Hoisting the red sail is a lot better.  People were actually shouting over the bay how beutiful she was.

I took the camera, but had no time to take pictures.

Tomorrow we will rig the lazy jacks, sheet, etc. Will we sail on friday? It would be fun.

We changed the halyard from three strand to a braided one for less friction between the parts. And also changed to a wooden block, as you can see. And put some new tar on the servings of the grommets and whippings.

Mast crane

Linnea from above

Mast top with new wooden block that will hopefully give a better lead

But what is best?

Paint? Varnish? Cuprinol? Nothing?

Suggestions, please!

Yesterday we were going to take off the mast. In the plans it clearly states that the mast foot should have limber holes. But I didn’t put them there. I figured that could wait, since we were only going to make a few sail trials and not sail the big seas this year. We wouldn’t have big waves rolling over the deck. I mean, what could happen?

If you don’t put limber holes in the mast foot the mast swells. And it is difficult to remove a swollen mast. The mast crane was able to lift the boat quite high out of the water, though, pulling the mast top.

Now I have learnt something. Feels great.

Laminated pine for the mast partner under deck. Also works as an oversized backing plate for deck hardware. I don’t understand why some people use grp-tubes or stainless bolted to deck. This is much simpler for a wooden hull, anyway.
Mast partners

The partner knees are epoxied with large a large radius filet to the hull and deck and taped with a number of layers of glass/epoxy.

Partner knees

Then there is a watertight bulkhead, slightly over an inch thick. According to the plans that one isn’t really needed for the hull strength, but it sure feels fine to have it there.

Also, the mast foot, made of laminated ash, running over numerous floors goes through this bulkhead. So it shouldn’t move.

So we got 26 canes. 5,4 meters long. (That means about a third of the batten will be overlapped and seized in the middle.) At the thick end they were 40-45 mm while we were aiming for 80 mm at the top and 60 mm at the bottom of the sail. The thin end was 20-25 mm.

The good thing is that we have more than twice as many canes as we need. So we should be able to use battens on both sides of the sail. This will give a slightly heavier sail than to use a thicker batten on the mast side and just something thin to lash on on the other side. Two 40 mm battens are also not as strong as one 80 mm. So I am pretty sure they will bend too much and possibly break in any heavy wind. But we will know more about that when we have tried it. The battens were also different. Some where thicker at both ends, so we will put them at the top.

This is what the battens looked like:

We also brought the sail aboard so we can lash it all together tomorrow and cut the rest of the running rigging, like lazy jacks, sheets, sheetlets and downhaul. I added a mast lift even though it isn’t in Tom’s plans, to help the lazy jacks hold the sail up at the forward end. It also gives an extra line up the mast, that might be handy to have.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow!

Meanwhile my mother is sewing on the boltrope and my father drives to the chandlers to find some line and fasteners.

Here is a picture of the mast at the galley. Looks quite good if you ask me. I had to discourage some people who wanted to hug it, because we had just had some extra oil on it. Maybe next time Mårten!