So two weeks ago I had a little brain fade and made contact with the bottom of the river coming into shore after the race, check the foil, all intact, no problem. Or so I thought …
Whilst out last week after work, doing 19 knots, my T join decided enough was enough and decided to fail, with my horizontal filing for divorce from my vertical.
So I sailed last week’s race with the old foil in, and man what a difference. The old foil needs a lot more effort to get up and going than the new one. I did however, manage to dial in a much better set-up this time around than I have ever had with that foil. At one point I overtook Steve in is prowler heading downwind, which placed a rather large smile on my face, even though he was back in front by the bottom mark.
The divorced foil is completely intact except for the T itself, so all I need to do is the same repair that I did at the nationals, and join then back together again, but this time I will be using carbon plates made specifically for the job, as opposed to whatever I have kicking around in my gear bag.
As part of the repair process I am mentally contemplating whether a bladerider style system is a better way to go, in the future as opposed to the whole embedding of the T into the foils as it is an engineering pain in the ass.
The flip side of that though is the need to have a large, fat T join instead of a nice, thin one … decisions … decisions. I think its time to have a play in Rhino.
In other news, Grant has put Luka’s Skywalka up for sale. At $14,000 AUD this is an absolute bargain compared to other used prowlers currently on the market, and in the right hands would be competitive pretty much straight away, and it’s $4,700 cheaper than a new FX.
Bruce did your prefab “T” fail or did it pull out of one or the other foil?
Two piece is asking for trouble IMHO.
The “prefab” T that I made failed. The mistake was replicating the two L’s idea that we used with the stainless T’s.
That said. If I hadn’t run aground it would be fine.
While I’m sure the two piece is a faff, the bulb system is lower drag…
Too bad Bruce, I did this once or twice where the Carbon T Broke, but mostly the bond between the T and the foils let go. So the legs on my T’s got progresivly longer. (I think the last ones are about 75 up the strut and 150 across the T)
I want to have a go at the BR style Joint as well, if nothing else just to see if my idea of how I think it works (structurally speaking) is correct. But although I have lots of things planned, god knows when I’ll get to see either of my boats next and actually do any work to them.
Cheers.