Happy Hallowhere the hell did I put the last piece of 320 grit?

Today, 2008:  I tabbed in the 2:1 shivs,

I joined the crane box to the cap,

(that is just the mocked up bit.  The structural lamination is curing right now)

and while those things were curing I did more destructive testing with the truck and then a 10:1 purchase with me hanging from the mainsheet.

I was curious how small the line diameter I could go with for the loup around the lashing point.  Good thing I did it here too, because the small dyneema, though strong enough sawed right through the carbon wall of the mast bit.  Basically, fill the hole as much as possible, because it spreads the load.  I’m comfortable with the final loup I made which ended up being about 9mm in diameter. 

  The last thing I did for the day, and probably the most important thing was to laminate a piece from my smoothie blender which I broke from over tightening.  I’ll have pics of that tomorrow.

-Ryan

A few words on the election;

I keed, I keed.  The last thing anyone wants to hear is my opinion on politics.  Come to think of it, it’s the last thing I want to write about.  I did vote on Tuesday though

So today I sanded all the reinforcements on the rig for shiv boxes, prepared for jib and storm jib shivs, did some more lamination on the masthead crane, and finished painting the pushpits and pulpit.  Flat black of course.  This gets rid of annoying little reflections at night which can cause fatigue at 3 am. 

For the 2:1 shiv boxes I’m using little micro blocks which have a breaking max working load of 500 lbs.  Instead of using rivets or screws, both of which go through the carbon tube, I will be using some G-10 plates, mounted on top of the mounting plates and laminating them to the mast.  The holes pattern the blocks come with are too close to the mouting hole for the block to use in a carbon rig.  Maybe a couple mm, which would be okay for an aluminum tube, but so would pop rivets.  

Croc shot for Solo.

The 2:1 halyards are to reduce compression on the rig.  The shiv is significantly lower than the forstay holes.  This gives significant clearence, preventing lines from chafing on eachother.  My left finger is aproximately where the 2:1 will terminate.  I’m going to be using a square top jib, so being two-blocked is not a concern.

The next shot is of the masthead crane.  It’s actually a left over bit of toe rail that fit the bill, so I just added a bunch more carbon to it.  I’m using it for the main halyard shiv and the masthead spinnaker shiv.  The part extending to the left is for the 2:1 termination on the main and the windex.  There is also a bit sticking forward for the wind instrument wand.  I will attach this to the masthead cap tomorrow.

Later.

-Ryan

Today, again…

So, I’ve figured out where my halyard shivs need to go for jib and storm jib, and also for fraction spinnakers.  However, there was no reinforcement in those areas so I had to add them before I get on with installing the shivs.  It was a bit cool today, so they didn’t cure hard enough to sand, but I’ll get that done tomorrow.

The bit I have wrapped at the mast head is a part I’m using for the mast head crane.  I put mold release on it so I can pop it off tomorrow and continue working on the crane.  I made the masthead shiv box today, but didn’t get a picture of it.  I’ll get some tomorrow. 

When I wasn’t tending to various bits of lamination I was finishing off my new pushpits which needed a bit of styling on the foot mounts, and primed one for painting before running out of primer.  Must remember to get some more of that in the morning.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow…

-Ryan

Easier = Better?

Today I finished drilling and sanding all the holes for the rigging and forestay.  Then went about installing the lashing plates.  I started at the masthead because they were easy to access, and went with my original plan which was to tap 3mm bar stock into the lashing plates, pull them through the inside out and use a nut and washer to hold the plate in place for the lashing or loop or whatever.  I did this, and it was no more difficult than installing any other bit of rig hardware that requires screws instead of pop rivets.  I’m not using pop rivets anywhere on my mast.  It’s the “pop” part that bothers me about installing them in composites. 

  

 

This worked fine, but there was something about the process that seemed a bit overboard.  So for the rest of the fittings I’m not going to be screwing them to the inside face.  instead I’ll let the lashing/splice (thinking more splice these days) hold the plates in place.  It will allow some movement on the slack side, but very little and the mold release film inside the mast will keep the plate from chafing the inside.  Basically I’m letting the parts do their thing.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on it for a couple days to see if anything bad happens.  It just has to last for 5,000 miles to pass my standards.

No set screws in this lashing plate? We'll see...

Tomorrow, I’ll move to making a masthead crane fitting and figuring out the 2:1 halyards for the jib and storm jib.

-R

Tick-tock…

I’m spending a lot of time on the rig making sure everything is snag free and positioned properly.  For a singlehander, making sure the rig is near perfect is a top priority.  Anything that goes wrong up top becomes a huge problem when you’re out there alone, and it costs many many miles against your competitors.  So I took a long time making the parts today for the rigging terminals. 

They are not perfectly machined by any means, but they are hand made from G-10 and for the most part are smooth where they need to be so the lashings do not chafe.  I’ve got a couple to touch up tomorrow. Each one was roughly sculpted with a dremel tool, then sanded with 100 grit, 220 grit, 320 grit, and finally 400 grit.  I then polished them with a common oil based product known as spf 50 sunscreen.  It’s what I had laying around.  The two right most ones are for the headstay and the baby stay.

The same sanding process took place with the mast.  These holes line up with the lashing plates above, which will be mounted inside the mast tomorrow.

I didn’t use sunscreen on the mast though   That will be clear coated after it’s finished being rigged.

-Ryan Finn

Rigging terminations! What about them?

The past couple of days have been rainy, so I took advantage of that to have an actual weekend.  Today however, beautiful weather, and beautiful weather only means one thing for my campaign,  work day. 

     I started the day experimenting with some 6mm carbon pins that I was going to use as lashing points within the mast for the standing rigging.  I have a spare section of my mast to play with for this, so I did a little destructive testing.  I tied one end of the loaded part to a tree and the other to my truck and put it in reverse.  All three carbon pins shattered.  There goes another great idea. 

You can see the mast section starting to fail.

Changed the angle of the load to mimic the real life angle of the load.

 

   The mast section and G-10 backing plates were in fine condition though, so I decided to try something else.  Above are pictures of the prototype lashing termination.  It is a solution that I am confident will work for the new mast.  Not only is it lighter and stronger than my original solution, but it’s also easier to make.  I’ll include pictures of the internal parts tomorrow.

-Ryan

Rigging the mast.

I’m waiting for some parts to come in from McMaster Carr before I can start drilling holes in the rig.  Spent most of the day measuring and marking the rig for all fittings and designing how all these things will attach to the rig.  I’m totally making this up as I go along.  I spoke to Tony at Forte (mast builder) about three times today and also chatted with Trevor Baylis about something that sounded cool in my head.  Glad I did.  I needed them to talk me out of experimenting with something that could have been messy.  More later… 

Here are some images from a couple weeks ago of the deck with the new toe rails, cockpit foot chocks, Lewmare deck hardware and theescape hatch i’m installing. 

-R

Forte Mast Day 3 (wet from hosing)

Mast Day 4 (today)

Day 4, all of those sanding discs on the ground were for the last five feet!

Day 4, Ready to be rigged.

Inboard chainplate, day 1 or 2

Inboard chainplate day 4Inboard chainplate day 6day 6Day 6 still

Last day, port side

Why am I doing this again? Oh yeah, I want to go sailing…

Hello all.  I just wanted to share with everyone, everything I do, every day, Just so you all know how much work is involved in preparing a boat for a singlehanded ocean race.  So, let’s begin:

I’ve been sanding my mast for the last four days in preparation for installing all the hardware including spreaders, shiv boxes and rigging terminations.  I picked it up on Saturday from Fort Lauderdale after borrowing a trailer from The Edison Sailing Center here in Fort Myers.  Four days of sanding later, over one hundred dollars in sanding discs, and a lot of carbon dust matted on sun screen and the tube looks beautiful.  However, I will never again be so liberal with carbon/epoxy putty. 

I’m also including images of the chainplates which I just finished building to allow for overlapping headsails upwind.  This should vastly improve Ms. Minkoff’s light air performance and make her a much better all around performer. 

-Ryan Finn