Sunday was quite productive. The cockpit floor has all been covered in carbon and I have laid-up my foredeck outer skin. I will be completing the foredeck this week, and put it in place in a week or so. The wing tube should be arriving shortly, so I also now need to think about finalising my fitting list so they can be ordered as well as starting on the gantry, prodder and getting some quotes for some wing tramps to be made.
Ok, ok .. I know I should do all the boring stuff first like carboning the deck, but I just couldn’t help myself and moved onto some fun stuff like installing my wand tube. I finally caught up with Luka, over lunch this week and we discussed a few ideas on what I should do after the Bladerider blitzkrieg in Garda.
With this boat I have tried to ensure that there is strength, adjustability and a good development platform to evolve and adjust setup, whilst allowing for changes in the future, such as new foils if required.
The teleflex cable has been replaced in by a carbon rod in a tube that runs from the front bulkhead to the bow, combining the systems used by Phil Stevenson on “Tiger on a chain”, with those on the Bladerider plus a trick or two of my own.
I also tried and measured the difference in cable movement between a straight “Bladerider” wand and my existing “Prowler” wand. The results were interesting with the straight one having 50mm of movement, and the bent one having 32mm. So a straight wand will be added to my build list.
Just for kicks I put my old teleflex cable on the new boat in the approximate position just to see where the foil position was on my old boat. As you can see it was a loooooooong way back, compared to where the case is in the new boat.
Tomorrow I will be carboning the deck, and molding up a foredeck using John’s foredeck mould.
Progress on the new boat, has been progressing steadily, with the cockpit floor being put in place this afternoon (temperature permitting).
I haven’t posted any updated pictures for a while. These are a bit old now, but show the Centreboard case frame, mast step and transom reinforcement.
The centreboard case frame will be sealed, instead of the front bulkhead. This will give two buoyancy compartments of roughly 50% each as required by the moth rules.
Well I finally got around to uploading some video that I took a couple of months ago whilst Luka was training for the worlds in a 25knot southerly.
There were a lot of new tweaks and ideas being used at the recent worlds at lake Garda, and one of the more interesting developments was the “wand on a stick” as used by John Ilett.
John obviously doesn’t mind trying new things, and I assume that the idea behind the pole is to have the wand as far forwards as possible, increasing the amount of time the boat has to react to changing surface conditions such as waves.
One potential downfall is that it could amplify the effects of hull pitch on the wand, especially during the “takeoff” phase where the boat is sailed bow up to increase the angle of attack on the main foil.
How well did it work? I think that the jury is still out on this one at the moment, however if all the other Prowlers in the fleet start growing poles as well, we know that he is obviously on to something.