i be sailing

All the seats are almost done, seat tops for the aft seats have been fixed and holes for the hatches cut. front seats and bow seat have also been glued on. seat tops for the front side seats have to wait until glass on nesting bulkhead is faired and hole for the nesting bolts re-drilled.

Finished glassing the aft side of the hull and two weeks ago I started filling in the weave of the glass on the hull with pioneer marine epoxy, it’s pretty hard work trying to apply the thick stuff and work it into the weave and leave a clean finish. and it was trial and error for a while. until (on advice from Rolly) I decided to just leave it a little rough and then sand it down later. 

Andrew made a great looking center board also, what we particularly liked was the foil shape. All the shaping was done with a chisel, the belt sander and the palm sander.  That dagger board piece has since been glassed and the weave filled in and ready to be fitted into it’s cb trunk.

We hope to get the cb trunk done within the week. as that’s pretty much the last major bit of construction for the hull, we can get on with the detailing bits next week. and the off-hull pieces like the rudder and mast and hopefully get some paint on the week after. In time for the messabout on June 24 in Loch Taal.

Also went to binondo to shop for aluminum mast tubing, the specific spec and size of tubing I was looking for wasn’t available there or anywhere in country apparently, so I’d have to settle for 2" aluminum pipe for the bottom section and 2" and 1 3/4" aluminum tubing for the middle and top sections. While in binondo I also obtained some poly-tarp to be made into a sail. I’m also looking to scrounge up enough funds to get the sail made. a sail maker quoted PhP3,000 to make one from Dacron or poly-tarp. I’d have to supply the material though.

Was playing around the other day for a color scheme for the boat. Photoshop works well for this job.

It’s going to look something like this. Yes, the white stripe is going to be part of it.

Cool eh?!

Also played around with maroon with a yellow stripe but it looked too gay

As you can see from the grin on my face, I was having a real good time.

Fast Exit is the name of Arvin’s boat, a 33 foot X99 racing yacht from Denmark. Arvin is the Moderator and Administrator on of the Philippine Sailing Forums where I met other boat heads like myself.

We had a great sunset cruise. Rolly was also there, fresh from an eye operation a few hours before, as well as Andrew and David.

Arvin’s mainsail was under repair and we couldn’t use it but winds were good and we were able to set sail on only the #3 jib.

A few minutes after hoisting the sail Arvin handed me the helm, My first time ever piloting a boat, it was really cool! With only the jib up, everything was very much simplified and easy to understand. I actually didn’t want to give up the helm, but I eventually passed it over to David and Andrew after about an hour or two :P. All us especially us three newbies had a good time.

Managed to fix the disaster that happened with the "big cut". It was repaired rather well really. I cleaned up the bad cut, and covered the aft side (the clean side) of the nesting bulkhead with cellophane tape, then slopped a generous amount of putty on the "affected" area and re-joined the halves of the nesting bulkhead. The excess putty that was squeezed out was used to fair the outside seam. After the epoxy cured the two halves separated easily. and we ended with a nice clean patch up job.

The edge of the repair wasn’t quite flush with the rest of the nesting bulkhead so a little more putty was added. Here’s what it looks like after I glassed over the edge of the nesting bulkhead.

Next to do was install mast collar and and bow reinforcement block that it leaned on, it was a pretty straight forward job. we haven’t installed the cover yet since we are still going to cut a hole there for a deck plate. 

While Andrew was working on installing the aft seats I was busy glassing the front half of the boat. I was supposed to use plastic sheeting to make a nice smooth finish on the hull. But it was more trouble that it was worth and I decided to fore-go it.

The plans called for using 1/4 inch ply for the seats and installing stringers to support it. But we decided to use 1/2 inch ply and reduce the number of stringers instead. In the end we would probably have sturdier seats, a few grams heavier but i think the trade off  was worth it.

While working on the seats, Andrew discovered a few innovative new uses for them: