Disaster!

Having taken everything we wanted to keep dry back to Cambridge for safe keeping, disaster struck this weekend. My basement flooded!*

All the cushions, other soft furnishings, rope, some wood, the cooker, some electric kit, the anchor - all of it ended up in 10cm of water!

I put it in there to keep it dry!

The endless battle against the damp

No one should keep a boat in England. 

Our boat is damp. The damp gets inside, it never gets dry and now, the woodwork is starting to rot. It seems water finds its way in all over the deck, through the fittings and around the hatch. Hopefully not through the hull.

A particularly bad spot

Modifying the sails - Part 2

After my previous entry on our motivations, here is an update on the work we have done so far modifying our sails for hanks.

Unpicking the old stiching

The sails we have are fitted with boltropes for the luff foil. There are 3 ropes sewed into the luff of each sail. As the grommets to take the new hanks have to be at the very leading edge of the sail, that means two of the ropes had to be removed.

Tired after the first sail. 7 to go...

Modifying the sails - Part 1

Why are we modifying the sails?

While the weather has been too cold and wet to work on the boat we have been spending our time stiching, unpicking, sewing and hammering our sails. This was quite a large job, and, once started offered no chance to go back! In short, it seems plausible you may be wondering why we are doing this?

New stainless grommets

Old...

... and new

A video from the Biscay trip

Getting to grips with epoxy

A big advantage of having a fiberglass boat is the ease of making structural repairs - epoxy will readily bond to a well-prepared surface. While more expensive than polyester resins, it's good for peace of mind.
While stripping out the forepeak, we found the bulkhead behind the water tank cracked - primarily because of the unnecessary large cut-out. Also, the batten running the width of the bulkhead was not attached to the bulkhead itself. Moreover, the chopped strand mat used to bond the bulkhead to the sides of the hull was not wetted with enough resin and came away easily in some areas - and the gap between the plywood edge and the hull was never filled. All reason enough to fix it properly while we have a chance. Here's what seemed to produce satisfactory results: