Monthly Archives: August 2007

Holes

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Today was the “holy day”. It essentially involved putting in the holes for the wing tramps and the bungs. There are a number of different ways that this can he approached, personally I like to glue in a short tube in each hole to ensure there are no leaks.

This however makes the entire process some what time consuming and a little bit painful. Anyway it’s done now and I can move on to other jobs.

Also during the week I sent some money to the IMCA and the YA and I now have a sail number – AUS 9366, which is 198 boats after the first moth I built – KA 9168.

The next generation

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Nothing stands still in the moth class for very long, and the Bladerider has lost it’s title of “new kid on the block”. Dave Lister last weekend took out his “Gilmour” for it’s first shakedown runs and some testing against Luka’s Prowler.

So far so good and it appears to be quick, stable and very forgiving. Not to be outdone, Scott has decided to purchase a prowler Mk 5, after his very successful worlds campaign with Bladerider “factory” support.

DavesFinishedBoat So what exactly is a Prowler Mk5 ? Only John Ilett knows for sure but you can bet that it will be in response to the ass whipping that Rohan, Amac and Scott delivered at the recent worlds.

There will come a time when team BR will have to decide whether they stay one design, or follow the development race. I think that time is still a couple of years away yet, but now that Amac has returned to KA, and the competition is responding, it is going to interesting to watch what happens. All we need now is to convince Mark Thorpe, Emmett Lazich and Andrew Landenberger to all come out of retirement and start racing and developing moths again.

Some wing bars and a foredeck

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After a long weekend, the boat now has a foredeck, and a front and rear wing bar. The photos below show the tubes in the jig waiting some glue and carbon, the mast stump support beam and the deck in place, strapped down with the glue oozing everywhere. The glue is resin with glue powder plus some black ink.

The next job is the mast step, and wing blocks to fit the front and rear bars, then I can make up the side bars.

WingTemplate

FrontBar StrapForedeck

Tubular hell?

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The “tube fairy” arrived yesterday and delivered a large assortment of carbon tubes, direct from c-tech in New Zeland. And I must say, I’m very impressed. With our bulk order for 4 boats we managed to get all required wing tubes, mast and boom for a very good price, significantly cheaper than any local supplier. This is a shame because I would rather support Australian businesses if I can.


The finish quality of the tubes is excellent, and I will now have a challenge to keep the corner joins up to the same, high quality standard.


I have molded and rough fitted my foredeck, so this weekend will be a quite busy one, with my goal to have the wings built and fitted, as well as the foredeck, lacing holes, transom and back bar.


The to-do list is well past the 50% mark, and hopefully I will start running out of things to do shortly.