Finally sailing
The goal this summer was to finally get the boat sailing. Armed with the help of my dad we drove to my uncle’s summer cottage and started painting away, sealing all surfaces agains temporary water, such as capsizing or taking on water by any other means. The hull was painted white inside and trim was varnished. All spars were varnished. When waiting for paint to dry we did all the running and standing rigging, measuring, splicing, tying etc.
The centreboard was also finished by adding a top pieace which enables it to be straight and to be tied down to the centre board box. The tiller and tiller extension where finalised.
The last thing to do before testing the boat was to add all the hardware. Most of it was screwed to the boat and spars and bedded with Sikaflex.
Late the last afternoon we loaded everything on the very oversized trailer and headed for the pontoon jetty in the lake. It took a very long time to rig everything, so this is a point of redesign. It might be that I should convert the rigging from gaff to sprit rigs.
With everything ready we donned wetsuits and lifewests and try to get of the pontoon, with difficulties. Since the mizzen is very large it is somewhat hard to fall off the wind with no speed.
Eventually we got going though. We started to try and head up the wind so that we would drift back to the pontoon in case something happened. Once we got going and kind of started to understand the boat, ignoring a bit the bending of the masts and the occasional taking on water by leaning to much, it went like a rocket! Superfun!
My uncle had started his sports watch so that we could get some speed readings, and the highest reading we got was 5.2 knots! Impressive, or maybe not that impressive. 5.4 should be the hull speed of the boat. Anyway it was superfun until I cut my foot on the maststep of the mizzen in a tack. Well, well, punishment for not wearing shoes. Be warned about the red water in some pictures
