After 4 days of non stop boat construction, the mast went up for the first time yesterday. With spreaders being a complete unknown at this point, I resorted to the well tried method of aluminum flat bar. Once the rig has been tuned I will look into making some nice foam sandwich ones.

The main items left now are the rudder gantry, fit and adjustment the foils, painting the deck and a few touch-ups on the foredeck.

Work continues in earnest on the new boat. The wings are now all together, ready to be cut apart again. The tramps are on order, and should be here next week. The major item left is the construction of the gantry, which is a new adjustable design.It is prooving to be interesting to transfer from design to reality.

John Gilmour’s yet to be named design couldn’t have had a better start to it’s racing life than what happened on Saturday. Dave Lister managed to come away with a win, proving that the package is every bit as fast as the Fastacraft Prowler. To be completely honest, as most of the boats are using Fastacraft foils, it should come as no surprise that the boats are just a quick. Well it wasn’t a surprise to me, but some other onlookers weren’t expecting that type of result.

Next week will be really interesting when Scott and Mark Robinson come down with one borrowed and one new Bladerider. As for me, I’ll be stuck in the shed making wing bars and fitting out a boom.

It’s official. I hate sanding. Filling, sanding, filling, sanding, sanding some more. Some months ago I decided that I wanted a clear carbon boat. That all seems fine until you sit down and try and actually do it …

Ideally your boat would come out of the mould, and all you would have to do is give it a polish and away you go. Well it simply isn’t like that. On my boat there were two main concerns, pinholes in the carbon weave, and some areas on the chine that didn’t mould properly.

Normally that isn’t an issue as a couple of bog wipes later you are ready to paint. Except when you want to finish clear, as any filling you do must also be done clear.

So with about 40 hours of filling and sanding behind me, I am reasonably happy with the hull finish. I can still find faults in it, but if I actually want to go sailing this season, I need to stop sometime.

Anyway on to some photos:

Before

After

In case you are wondering, yes that is a new workshop. In the last three weeks we have sold our house and are now renting in a new place. That is another reason why there hasn’t been an update in a while.

Oh one more thing … Mark Thorpe is a master boat builder. To get his boats with the clear finish that he does takes a LOT of skill and/or hard work. There is a reason why the bottom of the Bladeriders are painted red, and there are no clear Prowlers … time.

My boat also has a name “Teknologika”. Now where have I heard that before?