Passion X

Now that summer sailing is winding down I have been concentrating on the boatbuilding. The extra two and a half days a week have been put to good use and for a lot of the period the weather has been very kind.
By Tuesday the fine weather will have given way to a week of rain so I am charging ahead with the hull painting and have just the second top coat to go to finish the topsides.

On top of the to do list is the rudder foil which will be a nice indoors job if the weather is a wet as forecast. Close behind is the ice box foam and the last piece of the galley top. The gallery components are being finished in the workshop so that then can be screwed or glued as appropriate into the hull in a finished condition. That will allow me to paint the surfaces on the flat which gives a better gloss with no chance of runs. I have decided to attach the engine enclosure top and starboard side with screws so that they can be removed in the future if access is needed to the motor. For regular services the smaller access doors will do.

At the rear of the engine enclosure is a removable panel which has yet to be made but the side panels have been finished ready to accept the rear one.

A short list of remaining wood work includes the top hatch cover, a base in one of the hanging lockers, a door for the vanity in the head and laminating the tiller.

When the woodwork is out of the way there is still some glassing to do including inside the water tanks and over the rudder when finished.

On the painting front there are the timber beams to varnish and ths non skid to do on the deck.

As for the work completed in the past three weeks I will include that information in the captions on the pictures below.

In the five weeks since the last post I have been diligently sanding and painting. Along the way there have been some difficulties, some progress and some satisfaction.

As one job list gets completed the next list grows and there are jobs that I am doing that never got on the job list but were front of my mind anyway.

At the end of the last post we had started the stainless steel work. That is now complete. All the holes for the fixing have been drilled, epoxied and re drilled. The holes for the navigation lights have been drilled and the stainless stored until the interior and exterior painting is completed.

If we stick to the fittings these have now progressed beyond the winch bases and chainplates. As stated above all the stainless steel work is drilled as is the stanchons, jack line padeyes, jammers, deck organisers, running gear padeyes, genoa tracks, mooring cleats and fairleads.

Instead of handrails on the cabin top I have installed a grab line the same as on Passion X. This doubles as a jack line to which the short tether can be attached and ensures that you cannot be lost overboard. To go forward of the mast you need the deck mounted jack line and that is also installed, or at least the holes are drilled for the fittings.

On the cabin top I have installed the padeyes for the mainsheet bridle. I have stuck with the Wichard folding padeyes as on Passion X but gone up a size so that it is secured by three 10 mm bolts through 36 mm of cabin top and doublers. They have a working load of four tonnes and a break load of nine tonnes. I have used the same strength for the staysail fixing to the foredeck. Here the 10 mm bolts go through 50 mm of hardwood blocks fastened to a 21 mm thick plywood frame which forms the back of the anchor locker.

With all the fittings I found a few places where additional doublers were needed. Mostly around the stern stainless steel work, the genoa turning blocks and the deck top jacklines. They are all finished now except for a coat of paint on the genoa turning block doublers.

I do have the top coat on the deck. The epoxy undercoat and the first coat of two pack polyurethane went very well. The first coat of polyurethane was 50:50 undercoat and topcoat which gave a good shine and a bit of body. Unfortunately the spray gun failed at the start of the final top coat and during the delay trying to fix it the weather changed for the worse. I had to finish with a smaller than ideal nozzle which made the job take a lot longer than planned.

There is only a short time window to recoat the polyurethane without sanding it all back so I perservered despite the wind. Most of the deck will be recoated with non skid and the only areas where the gloss is important is the cockpit seats and the cabin side. These are passable but it would have been nice to do it all in controlled factory enviromnent.

The interior painting is progressing with many days of sanding, masking up and painting. The gloss has to be sanded of all the old epoxy and each coat has to be sanded down. Any construction glue excess has to be sanded off as this will the the last chance to do any tidying up. In general all the interior surfaces have two coats of high build epoxy primer undercoat, a coat of polyurethane undercoat and a coat of polyurethane topcoat. On the carlins I did an extra coat of undercoat to fill the wood grain more completely and the result is passable. If I was building a show boat I would do two epoxy primer undercoats, two polyurethane undercoats and two topcoats. Ideally the undercoat would have a higher gloss so that the imperfections can be attended to before the topcoats as these are thin and do little filling. In the old days when we were varnishing our moulded scow moths we needed at least seven coats to fill the grain to our satisfaction. Passion XI is however a bit bigger than the scow moth and I don’t have my my father to help.

I have given in to my most cautious self and added two layers of heavy unidirectional glass across the strongback under the quarter berth. That is topped with biaxial and covered with peel ply. I was suprised how little resin was required to thoroughly saturate the cloth and how clean the finish was under the fine textured peel ply.

I have not felt like posting these past two months due to a two week break to sail in the ILCA World Masters in Adelaide and being pretty tired after long days working on the hull.
To me it seems like groundhog day with the same tasks ahead every day and possibly not too interesting for the followers.

In other development we have lost our hull cleaning provider who had been doing a fantastic job over the last year keeping the bottom of Passion X race fit. Since then our performance has been hampered by more than usual hull fouling. Despite one hull clean the hull speed under motor is not up to expectations so this is a work in progress.

Parts are trickling in as available and I have added to my stock of deck fittings, engine exhaust parts and electrical elements. The fuel tank has arrived and will be put in its final resting place as soon as a last coat of epoxy is applied. I had been agonising about how to fill a small triangle between a stringer and the fore and aft side of the quarter berth and with the arrival of the fuel tank I settled for a wedge of foam bedded in epoxy bog so that the gap is filled to avoid any water trap.

I am owed a winch but the holes are drilled and we could launch with one winch short but it is amazing how long the lead time is. The fridge parts are also on back order as is the head basin but these are not holding me back.

A selection of photos from the last month

We had a holiday booked to go to Norfolk Island for a five day break so I was keen to have the plywood deck painted and protected from the weather. That motivation was enough for me to get three coats of Interprotect on the plywood cabin top and one to two coats on the epoxy glassed decks.

I planned for wet weather and that is what we got but I was contented that the plywood was well protected. We did pick the wettest twilight race to miss and only nine yachts from all the fleets presented. It was a dismal way to end the 2023 sailing year but that is weather.

We returned in time for the Christmas festivities and while we had a quiet Christmas and New Year we enjoyed the family dropping in for overnight stays on their way to their own activities.

A bonus was son Mark spending a morning torture boarding the primer on the deck and grandson Rohan helping to cut out all the instrument mount holes on the bulkhead.

I used one of the cooler days to progress the painting in the rudder stock compartment. With that done I closed off the aft starboard seat which was providing ventilation, finished painting the rest of the compartment and epoxy saturated the raised seat to preserve the water proof status of the aft cockpit.

On the critical path to installing the electrics I needed to get the instrument panel constructed which I did in tandem with the galley sliding door locker so that we have matching clear finish ply on the two sides of the boat. It looks a little dark at present but will lighten up when the ceiling and walls are painted white.

Next on the critical path for the electrics was the battery box which I did in parallel with the saloon settee seats. These are now build and fitted with lifting lids and removable floors

I had been putting off completing the cockpit locker hatch while waiting for the fuel tank to be constructed but I decided that I could do most of the structure just leaving off the internal lip on the cockpit side. Having done that I thought I may as well tackle the locker lid. I had saved the 12 mm ply from the deck cutout for that purpose but I found bending the 12 mm ply over the light frame of the lid was a little difficult when I did Passion X seven year ago. This time I laminated up the lid from two layers of 6 mm ply held down over the existing cockpit seat curve. After a couple of days of very warm weather the panel was ready to use and it certainly made completing the hatch much easier. I glued it up in situ this afternoon taking care to mask up any wet epoxy seams. I will tape some of the internal corners when the glue cures but it looks good as is and I will fit the hinges temporarily so that the hole into the locker is protected. Then I will finish fairing the rear winch on that side in safety.

There are a lot of jobs going on so in parallel with the cockpit locker I have cut out the floors for both the head and the quarter berth. The measurements I took for the quarter berth floor were good enough to get a fair fit first time but to get it perfect took a half a day longer. From the quarter berth floor I cut a cardboard mirror image of the vital parts and then cut the cardboard to size in the head. That was a lot easier as there was less trimming to do for a good fit.

This morning I cut and fitted almost all the cleats for these two floors and screwed and glued them in position this afternoon after gluing up the cockpit locker lid. As it was warm I had to work quickly to use up the glue before it went off.

Now the quarter berth floor will need a little triangle on the outboard side to bridge the gap between the hanging locker and the floor. It could be a handy cable way.

In the head life is a little more complicated. On Passion X there is a sloping floor so that all the shower water drains to a sump which is fitted with a Jabsco bilge pump with a manual switch. For the new boat I plan to use the same bilge pump but I will put it on a float switch so that it will run if anything untoward happens in the head. The floor will be in two parts, a semi fixed part with a slight slope to the sump and a perforated removable sump lid, The semi fixed floor will have services running between the stringers and will seldom be lifted so the plan is it silicon seal the edges and make it waterproof . Again there is a corner against the hanging locker where the hull is exposed and this should get a triangle edge for appearance sake.

Once these finishing touches are done there is still the galley to complete, a fridge to construct and a set of drawers to make. The wider engine cover for Passion XI will allow a slightly wider set of basins to be installed but I won’t start that until I have the basins in hand.

So much to do and so little time.

I have been frustrated with my attempts to create posts on this site. The issues in no particular order have been the terrible internet availability in my suburb. The upload speeds for the photos posted in the blog has been so slow that the attempts time out. By using my mobile phone as an internet hot spot I have been able to work around that problem but for the times when the phone also does not have internet access. The next issue was Telstra blocking my access to the site. I guess the word “passion” in the title is too much for them. Finally I have been pretty exhausted after days of working on the new build and have not needed much of an obstacle to stop me in my tracks.
You would think that in the month since my last post there would be some exciting progress but alas it is just lots of little jobs that need to be completed before the deck can be painted.

At the same time as progressing glassing the deck I have had to find less taxing jobs to add to the mix as I cannot weild the big sander all day of hand plane all day of hand sand all day. It is quite rewarding to have a mix of jobs that both challenge the body and the mind while progressing the construction towards the end.

My friends at Gosford Sailing Club will know sailing has been cancelled tomorrow due to the 43 degrees C forecast. That is 109.4 in the old F scale so a very wise decision. It may be too hot for boatbuilding but I am sure there will be some quiet and tedious task than needs to be completed.

I have filled all the holes in the deck which awaits sanding prior to a light layer of glass. The glass will go under the cockpit coamings to protect the deck from winch handles which are stored there during racing.
Not being in the mood for sanding I turned my attention to the cockpit coamings. Dudley has changed the arrangement of the lockers and coamings in a subtle way which made the forward openings too narrow for my chubby hands so I widened the openings a little and made them all equal height which is ever so slightly different but equally attractive.

Unlike Passion X where the coamings are parallel to the deck on the new one the coamings increase in height and are just a couple of millimetres away from level with the waterline. As a result the panels twist ever so slightly so great care was required to set them out precisely. As in the last build the coamings have been glued up and then removed to the workshop for the doublers and winch base mounting.

The 12 mm doublers had to be held against the slight twist of the panels and 160 kg of lead ingots did a fabulous job of keeping the glue joins nice and tight.

The next job was to cut out the 24 mm of ply where the prefabricated winch mounts will fit. A saber or reciprocating saw was ideal for the task.

The edges of the openings were then chamfered to allow for the epoxy glass which will bond on the top side.

Winch bases which I had made previously were then trimmed to equal dimensions and aligned on the coamings which were temporarily reunited with the hull.

The final task was to bog the bases to the 24 mm plywood and apply a layer of glass to keep everything stable while the coamings are returned to the workshop.

While it has taken a week to get to this stage I am happy with the progress considering I have had a cold which has slowed me down and we had one day of unworkable weather conditions. I did use that wet day to measure up all of the remaining doublers for the deck fittings and have marked up the ply ready for a spare fine day for cutting.

In other news the steel case for the keel bulb has arrived at the foundry and should have the 2000 kg of lead poured in tomorrow.

On the sailing front there is not much to report. For the past three weeks the wind had been from the South East which limits the course options. Small changes in the wind angles has made the three weeks slightly different and last Wednesday there were some incredible wind shifts where we were going in the same direction on opposite tacks. We had our share of luck but not so much in the last race where we languished in Humbug on the way out. It was a night for the back markers who had a long overdue return to the winners circle.

My rotator cuff injury has slowed down the boat building because planing and sanding is particularly painful. At the same time the weather has been very good for boatbuilding with days of fine warm conditions. These ideal conditions has allowed me to finish installing the gunwhale capping all the way to the bow and with the aid of some painkiller I have been able to plane and torture board the capping down to the final profile.

When I say final I mean until I have a second and third look at it and get the torture board working overtime. After the planing and sanding I have filled all the screw holes on the gunwales and most of the deck but the final part of the deck has been delayed due to a return of wintery conditions.

One satisfying piece of work was trimming the top of the bow to match the 45 degree angle of the gunwale capping. This took a bit of width off the appearance at the bow and it looks positively handsome now.

Today it was bitterly cold on the building site so I retreated to the garage and fabricated a jig so that I could mass produce some stringer doublers. These are small plywood elements that go over the bulkheads where the stringers pass through. The other option is to fillet the stringers but I find this difficult and a straight fillet between the plywood doublers looks neater and takes about the same time.

The doubler production was so efficient that I used 9 of them on the bulkhead B join to the deck.

Filling the screw holes in the deck prior to glassing the deck has been time consuming and to get a break from the bending over I retreated to the transom where I could work standing upright. Here I sanded the primary epoxy coat, filleted the inside corners and once cured routered the inside edge. This was topped off with a second coat of epoxy making sure that the end grain of the plywood was thoroughly saturated.

The weather is not worrying me with respect to the completion time as there are plenty of inside and outside jobs to match the conditions and today’s several hours fitting doublers to the stringers on bulkhead B was a cosy job inside the hull.

On the sailing front we have had a couple of good results with Passion X in the Greenwich Flying Squadron twilight series. The first of these a week ago was a favourable series of lifts on the windward work to Goat Island which kept us near the front of the fleet and the second this week was the added weight on the rail which improved our windward speed. Our handicap is now the same as one of the J112E yachts so we will have to work hard for anymore good handicap wins.

It seems like not a lot has happend over the past three weeks. We has a week off sailing between the Winter series and the Spring Twilight series but Laser sailing has started so there is something on three days a week.
Also slowing down progress is a repetitive strain injury which has meant working at a less vigerous rate so this post will be an update on the progress on the new Passion XI.

Another reason for the less frequent post is the poor quality of the internet in our district. Uploads in particular are painfully slow and many fail which means repeating the process until it works. To finish this post I had to use the mobile hot spot from my phone.

My priority is to get some glass over the deck so that the cockpit coamings can be installed over the glass. That means finishing all the deck elements including the gunwhale trim. Eighty percent of the gunwale capping is installed. This meant trimming back the excess plywood from the deck and fairing the gunwales and adding a 12 mm ply capping. Next the capping has to be planed back level with the plywood deck and sides and about this stage the repetitive strain injury took hold.

From here the search was for jobs that did not involve planing or hand sanding and while there a lots of these the appearance of progress is not so dramatic.

On one cold wet Monday I climbed under the gas bottle locker and glassed the two ply joins with two layers of 420 gsm double bias all covered with peel ply. Next I sanded the rudder port area, and applied generous coats of neat epoxy and a first coat of epoxy primer. I will finish off this area before completing the painting under the gas bottle locker as the painted surface is much more boat builder friendly than the raw epoxy glass.

Last Friday I picked up the chainplates and immediately drilled the holes for the forestay chainplate and did a first fit. The next day I completed the fit and routered a few millimetres off from the backing plate area so that the 200 mm bolts had enough thread showing for the nylock nuts. Then came the process of saturating the timber with neat epoxy and painting the anchor locker with four coats of epoxy.

It is hard to believe that it takes a week to install a forestay chainplate, paint the anchor locker, install the doublers and deck and after curing cut the anchor locker lid.

At different times I applied left over epoxy primer to various bare parts like the chart table area and at other times I prepared and painted area like the locker at the bow under the anchor locker. These all required painful feats of contortion and there is more to do.

The glimmer of hope for the RANSA Winter Wednesday series grew a bit brighter with the forecast of a brisk North West wind. For several days before the last race the forecast showed the North West wind direction ahead of a strong southerly change for the Thursday. The RANSA course for the prevailing wind is a broard reach to the heads and a tight reach back to Steele Point with works to Point Piper and from Shark Island home. Reaching in a strong breeze is one of the strong points of the Dudley Dix designed Passion X so my mood for the series was growing brighter.
On the day the breeze was gusting to 25 knots so we set the No 3 jib and full hoist main. We were further encouraged when our main rival, Alibi, also set a small jib so that if the breeze did die we would be in different boats but in the same situation.
With the gusty winds we were late at the start with only Amante and Britannia up on the line. Britannia was up and planing away from the fleet while we tailed Amante all the way to the heads.
The tight reach back to Steele Point was good for us as we caught Amante but could not get clear ahead and so rounded the Rose Bay mark in their dirty air. The work to Point Piper looked to be a single board but a late header sent Amante and us into the shore where we had to tack away.
The reefed Joli was lurking close behind with the reefed Allegro further back. Our rival Alibi was not to be seen and Agrovation was unusually back in the fleet.
From Point Piper we chased Britannia who was chasing Amante.
Amante had the jib nicley poled out to starboard while we stayed on port with the jib flying to windward and delayed out gybe until we were clear of the wind shadow. We just failed to clear Britannia but after the rounding went low and through their lee.
Out in front Amante was extending her lead while we were inching away from Britannia and watching Joli creep up on both of us. Allegro was a few minutes further back but Alibi and Agrovation had disappeared from view.
Over the radio we heard that Alibi had retired but with such a small fleet were unsure if we had enough points in the bag.
After the race we celebrated our second fastest with two bottles of sparkling wine and motored around looking for our divison finishers of whom there were few.
Back at Greenwich we heard the sad tale of the collision between Alibi and Agrovation and saw first hand the damage and then the results came out.
We had managed to get enough seconds in front of Britannia to beat them on handicap for second place which sealed the series for us.
It was a relief after many weeks of long beating courses to have a reaching one that suited Passion X.
A big thanks to the crew who have kept us in the race all season.

Back on the new Passion XI project, the Dudley Dix designed Didi 120, it has been a bit of an anticlimax after the excitement of getting the engine installed on the day it arrived. There is a lot to do and so much that I had stopped doing lists.

I had left the cabin front off until the engine was installed so that we had the extra exit if needed. Now that the engine was sitting on the bearers I was able to do the two layers of 6 mm ply in a single session and leave the laminated ply for a few days to cure well.

A heatwave had hit Sydney but the transom was under a tarpaulin and so it was a pleasant area work and a lot of work was needed. I like the big picture projects where acres of plywood can be glued down in a day but the transom is the opposite of that. Small infill pieces need to be glued between the stringers and then the inner 6 mm layer of ply glued in place. Next a 12 mm capping piece goes over all the fiddly bits to seal the stringer end grain and all the infill glue joins. To ensure a neat fit I made up some dummy capping pieces and covered them with masking tape and then used these to ensure that all the small infill pieces were in perfect alignment.

In the process all the bare timber had to be epoxy sealed including the inside of the 6 mm ply inner skin.

As an extra insurance policy I added a second layer of 6 mm ply to the inside curve. The transom step on Passion XI is so narrow that the inside curve at the transom is a small triangle of plywood and an extra 6 mm layer a tiny addition of weight for long term peace of mind.

In the hot weather and looking for small tasks I tackled the third stub floor under the kingplank forward of the mast. The first two went well but this third one was at the narrow end and had very restricted access. After removing a slot for the stub floor to pass through the web I thought I might have missed my calling in life as it seemed much like dentistry including the sound of the multipurpose tool. All three are done and done so well.

Tomorrow is another day and I might start work on the cabin top joinery where there are fore and aft stringers to be added. These will capture the cabin top hatch and provide good handholds for the crew climbing across the cabin top. That leads back to the companionway hatch and as the engine is in I can complete that. So many jobs to choose from.

Our race on the 6th September was a forgettable one. Out problems started when Alibi on port refused to tack until dead in our tracks. It was Gold medal racing at its finest and my only regret is that we did not have an international judge waving flags for penalty infringements. Maybe they did get around in time and maybe they did go to a close hauled course before pinching up but for our amateur crew the action was too fast to get a crew down to release the genoa so we went to a hove to position on port in the line of oncoming starboard tackers.

From there it got worse as we were now deep in the starboard tacking fleet and the only option was to take a few sterns and get away from the chaos. From here we were not going to win any prizes and to make matters worse a Div 2 boat who was left lots of room to tack for the mark insisted on putting us about before they reached down to the mark. This was pretty senseless as we reached over them on the next leg anyway.

Boat wise we were satisfied with boat speed and put our misfortune down to choosing a start position with too much traffic to cross.

Our result was another drop and a third drop in four races where the only result we carried was a seventh.

Our race result on the 13th was entirely our own doing as we were amongs the leaders half way up the first work. We tacked away from Allegro as we entered a light patch while they carried on for another 100 metres into a nice shift lifting all the way to the top mark. Joli very astutely tacked to the Steel Point shore even further into the progressive shift and came away with a good result.

We were in good breeze and on a progressive lift and based on the forecast were confident that the breeze would oscillate. Poor deluded fools that we were, we gave up hope as we approached the lay line and tacked away into a header when if we had gone well past the lay line we would have reached in with good breeze.

In the small fleet and with the tail becoming becalmed we managed to salvage a sixth place and only drop a further two places behind Alibi who were on duty.

That leaves us three places adrift of first place but with a big handicap disadvantage to overcome. Still miracles do happen and we hope for one in the last race this coming Wednesday.

Away from the race track progress has been more rewarding with the cabin top two layers of 6 mm ply laminated in place and the hatch and window openings cut out. Inside the engine bed area has been epoxy primed with three coats of high build and the seacocks for the engine intake and galley outlet installed.

To make installing the engine more comfortable I added an additional support under the transom area, which I did before going under the hull to install the seacocks, and cut, epoxy primed and installed additional flooring.

While epoxy priming the engine bed area I mixed up extra paint to touch up the V berth area, the chart table and the deck underside in a couple of lockers. It does make quite a difference having the extra white areas and less bare plywood.

At 10:30 am today the engine arrived and as I had a couple of crew primed to help I made the calls and it was all go go.

While waiting for help to arrive I drove the engine which had been delivered onto the top of my trailer, around to the back of the house and backed the trailer up to the transom of the hull. I then prepared the lifting gear and took a deep breath waiting for help to arrive.

With great care we lifted the engine on two chain blocks and by repositioning the chain blocks we manouvered the engine into the hull. The last step was to install cross beams through the window openings and to relift the engine with one chain block and then swing it onto the engine mountings.

All went to plan and the engine is bolted down to the engine beds waiting for the galley furniture to be built around it.

With that out of the way I could remove the flat top from my Laser trailer and put the Laser back on ready for the weekend sailing.

The last three weeks results at RANSA have all been discards so our position at the top of the leader board is under threat. It does not help our prospects having to give time to the three closest yachts in the contest.

We have a reason for the week before last when we won the run to the heads by a good margin but gave it away with a tear in the leech of the genoa which caught on every tack and got progressively longer and more difficult all the way home. It should have been a good result but for the rip.

Last week was more routine but we did get the geno sheets jammed in the windward block and could not get it sheeted in consistently. That was a minor issue and our tacking angles from the chartplotter were pretty special so the rest of the fleet must have been more special.

On the boat project I laminated up two layers of 6 mm ply to the shape of the cabin top and cut the doublers from these laminated and curves sections. By careful trimming I was able to get the doublers to a friction fit in the spaces and glue them to the first layer of 6 mm ply when that was installed. As of 1st Sept all the first layer of 6 mm ply is glued to the cabin top and all the 12 mm doublers are installed. At this stage I need to install the first layer of the sloping front of the cabin and then do the second 6 mm layer.

The other big job for the week was to glass in the engine beds to the hull. This calls for four layers of 420 gsm double bias on the corners and intersection with frame G where the engine beds join. Aft of frame G the beds run parallel and close to the cabin walls for the head and the quarter berth. That called for some very patient fibreglassing.

After glassing in the engine beds I decided to reinforce the strongback with three layers of 425 gsm double bias to give some cross grain reinforcement. the stern tube was already covered with three layers so it was a straightforward process to extend the laminates fore and aft for extra durability in these hard to access areas.

Shaping the front of the cabin is quite time consuming as clamps have to be built up from layers of plywood and then shaped to the cabin front slope after the glue is well cured. The timber stingers that tie the sloping cabin front to the 12 mm ply sided require careful fitting for an exposed timber finish and I counted five different surfaces that had to be fitted to the cabin top and all with fine glue lines.

While waiting for the glue on the cabin front stringers to cure I have cleaned up the glass around the engine beds ready for the epoxy paint and marked out the cabin side portlights so I can get better ventilation while applying the epoxy.

In two weeks of racing at RANSA we have gone from a first place to a twelfth place due to a combination of a poor start, a flat spot in the breeze around Shark Island and a more challenging handicap. Even the twelfth place did not give any handicap repreive so we will have to be on our very best form for the next races. Agrovation and Foreign Affairs have significantly tougher handicap while the occasional starter Meridian also has a tough one but then it is line ball with Amante and from there on we have to give time to everyone.

On Scratch Foreign Affairs leads the field from Amante and then Allegro and Passion X tied for third. This good position is due to Allegro and Passion X being consistent starters and this having four drops to count. It might have been different if Allegro had not managed to get through the wind shadow of Shark Island and into the new breeze to overtake Passion X on the way home last week but them’s the breaks.

We did have a win on handicap in the West Harbour Winter Series last Sunday despite the crew being just two young men and Elaine and I. We were helped by the wind angle which did not disadvantage us too much for not setting spinnakers and we did get a favourable gust along the Hunters Hill shore on the final leg. It was one very pleasant Sunday on the water and a first on handicap was the icing on the cake.

Between sailing and yacht audits at GFS I have managed reasonable progress on Passion XI. My progress has been helped by the careful cutting of templates for the cabin sides and by a lot of care in setting up the cabin top beams. The old saying measure twice and cut once has become measure many times and double check. Only then cut a template and check again. The angle of the plywood against the sloping deck sides has been carefully prepared in the workshop and the ply panels trial fitted several times. Only then was I prepared to do the scarf join in the ply on a 8:1 angle. The joins have been clamped together on the hull with final trimming after the first sheet is fastened and the second has another trial fit.

The scarf joins have been made in the workshop after trial fitting the adjacent panels and have needed only minimal adjustment on the hull.

As of tonigt the two cabin sides are glued in place and the front clamp on the deck is glued in place waiting for final shaping. I am debating with myself pushing ahead with the cabin top or epoxy coating all the timber that will be exposed after completion. Also I have a lot of doublers to cut out while I can get an accurate measurement off the cabin beams.

We made another good start to the Winter Wednesday racing at RANSA today and set for a long beat up the harbour for the forecast North West wind.

Five minutes before the start the breeze shifted to the East making the boat end favoured so we started towards the boat but out of trouble. We were progressively lifted so that we were pinned down by the yachts lifting from behind but took the first opportunity to tack away right at the north shore. After a brief port tack we tacked back on the next shift to the left under the fleet but well to the lead. Ten minutes later the shift to the left had increased and it turned out to be a persistent shift all the way to the mark. There was not much to do but hang in there waiting for a shift back but it never came. What eventuated was a shift so extreme that we made the top mark on the second starboard tack of the day and the yachts above who were closer to the land ran out of wind or had to reach down to the mark.

At the top we were in a close group of five yachts and elected to run wide while the yachts closer in to the shore seemed to have better breeze. We did manage to run past Allegro and were hot on the heels of Meidian but Foreigh Affairs, Agrovation and Crosshaven had drawn away. The run to Point Piper was very square depending on the shift in the breeze so a gybe was needed. Somewhere in there we passed Crosshaven and managed to keep just ahead of Allegro. Around the island and all the way home we ran alongside Meridian but were unable to pass them. While we battled side by side with Meridian we could see Amante making a late charge together with Allegro, Crosshaven and Britannia but we had enough gap to take the handicap honours by 4 seconds from Foreign Affairs and 11 seconds from Crosshaven. This result moved us a little further ahead on the leader board.

Back home it has been full steam ahead gluing plywood panels in place so that last night all but one 6 mm panel have been glued in place. At the bow I had to install a temporary stringer over the anchor hatch space to get a fair curve so the front section was formed up from two layers of 6 mm ply but not glued to the hull so that once cured it could be lifted and the temporary support removed. I won’t glue this in place until the forestay chainplate is made and installed.

Work will slow down for a while as Passion X has to be slipped for annual maintance.

We have been defending our first place on the progress score table at RANSA for the past two weeks while Alibi and Britannia have made big moves up and Allegro is lurking just behind.

Last week we had a bit of breeze and set the No 1 heavy genoa. Perhaps we should call this our No 2 genoa or is it a 1.5? From the running start we reached towards the top mark keeping pace with Agrovation and Love Byte but when the wind freed we tried to pole out the genoa without any success. In the process we lost a few boat lengths on these tow but managed to hold off the rest of the fleet. At the top mark Love Byte went deeper and perhaps deeper than allowed while we lifted well inside and stayed on Agrovations line. At Steele Point Love Byte took advantage of a knock to tack back on starboard and we were forced to go behind. Alibi was just on our shoulder and preventing us tacking but then she tacked away giving us options for our next move. On out tack back we had gained half a minute on Alibi.

The next move came around Shark Island when we gybed in a lull while Amante came through with the following gust. From there to home it was follow the leader with Agrovation a clear first and fastest leader from Amante and ourselves. Alibi did themselves a service with a fourth fastest and third on handicap. We managed 6th on handicap while Allegro had a drop and were caught on the leader board by Alibi. We were pleased with our third fastest and felt we managed the rig well in the conditions.

This week was a much lighter affair with a long work to windward for the first leg. We started on the pin and managed to keep ahead of the fleet for a few minutes until Britannia showed good boat speed and passed us to windward. Once clear to tack we waited for the first knock and found ourselves well clear of all the fleet except Britannia who were deeper into the lift. The shift put us up with the tail of the Division 1S where we found ourselves crossing tacks with Marloo. Looking behind we saw that Meridian had taken our stern and gone further North to takd advantage of the next shift and get a big gain on the fleet.

We made some good choices going to the mark but could not match the boat speed of Agrovation, Britannia, Foreign Affairs and Meridian. Crosshaven also caught us at the mark but we managed to get this back on the run to Steele Point.

The shortened course gave little chance for gains and we managed to hold onto our fifth fastest from Crosshaven, a fast finishing Allegro and Alibi. Amante was an uncharacteristic tenth. On handicap the front runners took the first four places, Crosshaven leapfrogged us into fifth while Alibi was seventh and Allegro eighth alloowing us to pull ahead one point but the big move was Britannia with a first place and dropping a 13th to be second on the leader board.

Now while we have not had any great places the handicapper has nevertheless seen fit to make life harder each week and it will be interesting to see how much harder he makes it this week.

Boatbuilding has been progressing at a steady rate with some assistance from the crew and Elaine. Ten days ago I had allmost all the deck sheets cut and trial fitted. Since then I have been busy cutting doublers for the fittings and for butt joins in the long sides of the 12 mm ply sheets. These are best done before the deck is fitted as the shapes can be marked off the stringers and the fits made very precisely. Almost all the 14 doublers have been cut and some fitted. The edges are chamfered at 45 degrees to make a neat fit to the single 12 mm thickness. I have to confess to getting the chamfers around the wrong way more than once but fortunately the two sides are mirror images so that has saved the doubler from the trash can more than once.

As of tonight all the 12 mm ply on the deck is glued in place as are a lot of the doublers. Tomorrow I will move to the 6 mm sheets on the foredeck and complete the doublers on the 12 mm section.

There is more to life than boatbuidling and so we enjoyed our time in Queensland with our family including a Christmas in July where all the families pitched in for a traditional Christmas feast. We had a surprise with the price of local prawns plummeting just in time for our contribution to the festivities. We are blessed that all the family are well and could get together for the event.
By coincidence the South Pacific Laser Masters were being held at Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron starting on the day we had planned to drive home so we trailed the Laser all the way to Queensland for the event. It was a great event with a good attendance of New South Welshmen. The highlight for me was a 6th place in the final race we sailed and the first over 75 year old for that race. So strong is the competition in our age group it was only good enough for a 4th but it was good to get some time on the water ahead of the Worlds in Adelaide this coming February.

We arrived back home in time for the Winter Wednesday race at RANSA aboard Passion X. The race was sailed into a 8 knot sea breeze which was a pleasant surprise for this early in the season. Our start was impeded by a competitor crossing our bow to get back behind the line and causing us to take avoiding action. This put us behind the eight ball right off the line. Our closest rival in the handicap series, Allegro had trouble of their own costing them time with an unscheduled tack so we maintained contact in the fleet.

Up the windward work there were wins and losses where we made up some ground on the last two tacks into the top mark but on rounding the wind died and let the likes of Meridian, Allegro, Crosshaven and Amante float away while the fleet caught us from behind. Eventually the wind came down the course and we recovered our position in time for the reach from Steele Point into Rose Bay. Around the point we went wide keeping a close tail on Allegro and to our surprise we ran up to Meridian. Foreign Affairs was having nothing to do with the fleet having disappeared into another dimension but the rest of us were having a great tussle.
Allegro was not going to let us get away and tailed us to Point Piper. On the work around Shark Island they pinched up so that we could not tack. Eventually I created some distance so we could tack behind them and as We tacked so did they. We had let the main right out to get behid them and so their tack was most difficult for us but we recovered and in our turn gained bit or width going in the mark. As the breeze tightened at the mark they pinched and slowed so that we rounded ahead again and held that lead all the way home.
Now we reached up to Meridian again and followed her home never more than two boat lenghts apart.
In the concentration on Allegro and Meridian we missed what happened to Amante and Crosshaven but we presume they went in too close to Steele Point again.
Our fifth place on handicap increased our lead by two points but it is still very tight and a lot of races still to go.

Now that we are home I can insert some photos of the progress since the hull was turned.

So after a good break from boatbuilding we returned to finish the deck structure at the bow and two solid days or planing the gunwales. The Makita power planer is not the quietest tool in the shed and it created a lot of sawdust in the process so by Saturday it was back to hand planing.

Fortunately Elaine put in many hours vacuuming the sawdust over the last two days and that let me get on with the task of cutting and fitting deck panels. Don came around on Saturday and helped to shift the larger 6 mm sheet into position for marking and cutting and Elaine helped today with the full size 12 mm sheets so that for the last four days the progress looks impressive.

The trial fit of the panels has identified the need for some temporary support in the anchor locker to get the two sides to match as the hatch side is missing a stringer by design. Thinking thinking! Also it is an opportunity to check all the stringer angles for some last minute planing.

Tomorrow all the large panels will be fitted but before gluing them in place I will mark and cut all the doubles as it is easier to mark and fit them from above.
In the meantime what plywood is temporarily screwed to the deck is providing good support for the tarpaulins as the rain has returned.