Hello Internet World! I'm super glad that you're here reading about our project, and hope you're as stoked as we are. Over the last week, we've made great progress on the construction of our rigs. On Tuesday, Don and I assembled the number one rig (the largest one for use in the lightest winds). It was really exciting to cut the shrouds and stays to length, connect them, and still find the mast to be just as straight and tall as we had hoped it would be! Seriously, it's amazing the tension that we put into the shrouds - they're like tightropes.
Unfortunately, we are having some serious trouble with the construction of our keel. It is perhaps the most challenging part of the design, weighing the structural demands of waving about a 14 kg lead bulb at the end of a meter-long, centimeter wide spar against the necessity of minimizing the cross section to reduce the drag. The keel and the rudder combined account for almost 80% of the total resistance, so you can understand why we are working so hard to make it as narrow as possible! We are in the process of machining the steel structure at the heart of it's carbon profile, and are dealing with practical problems of warping and odd angles. Once we get it to shape, we will be sandwiching the steel between plates of uni-directional carbon to increase the stiffness and create our foil geometry.
Our boat gets her first taste of the vancouver rain, and is rapidly nearing her launch date!
Please, just ignore the bondo.
This was by far the scariest mast I've ever been asked to climb!!
Our Wind Sensor Lives! (and in only 2 knots of wind, no less)
In other news today, Capt. Gaelen has finally earned his iron ring!!
rad!! how talls the mast!?
ReplyDeleteWhen you have to make a choice of boat accessories it is always safer that you start with procuring those that are vital to the smooth functioning of your boat and ensure the safety factors you will get from it.
ReplyDeletePhone Accessories Otterbox Ipod