Incredible sail today, 2 great races, F5, with awesome long reaches, foot in the footstrap thumping over the waves, managed to sail over a 300, and a few lasers, but lost out on the beats. Great fun, these conditions are exactly what I built her for.
However, I chucked it in blasting about between races and when I righted her, she was full of water again, big time. After wallowing around, rolling in again, I set to reach back home, but she was virtually unsailable, so I hailed a rescue boat, dropped the sail, capsized twice more getting organised and we began a tow before she sank completely !! Took 4 people to get her onto the trolley and up the slip enough to drain. I found there's a long split along the side tank seam where it joins to the floor panel. Gaffer tape tomorrow ! then a big dry out and glass taping required.
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Ok now I'm finding out what works and what's not strong enough
1. Rudder stock I had to pull hard in at strong wind bear away a couple of weeks ago to avoid a Dart, and heard a big crack as the bottom (ply) rudder pivot gave way. I repaired it by fitting a standard ally Seasure fitting which lasted another couple of sails but then the whole stock gave up. So that left me with three evenings to build a brand new stock before Sailfest. This time I laminated ply cheeks (used foam last time), cut the old stock off the tiller and epoxied it all back together, wrapped it in Carbon and scrambled to fit it out late the night before leaving. 2. Kicker strop 3 mins into the 1st Sailfest race, the wind build, I pulled on more kicker - another bang, the boom strop gave out ( and I'd just checked it before launching), mad 15min reach back to shore to botch it with a bit of rope and back out for the next race. 3. Major Leak Had some great racing in challenging conditions of wind an chop. Crossed the fleet on port in race three, but felt I was going backwards, and really struggled in the chop, The bow was burying into every wave throwing sheets of water through the boat, it was just so sluggish. When I got to shore I couldn't pull the boat up the slip, there was so much water inside, I've a major major leak ! Had someone look over her with me and one obvious issue is I've got the wrong O rings on the hatches. I'm not convinced this would have let so much water in but will try that, otherwise it's a more major issue. |
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