Passion X

Today I glued in place the last of the keel floors complete with pre drilled bolt holts all aligned. It has taken six weeks from starting to cut the timber for the laminations to get to this stage and that seems like a long time. The wettest start to the year for many years did not help with the progress and I have had time off the boatbuilding to go sailing and to do maintenance on Passion X. Allowing for these diversions I still think that there has been six weeks of three and a half days construction per week. In the process I have worn out one saw bench and one random orbital sander as well as investing in a dozen new clamps.
The new saw bench is a great improvement on the old one and I have no regrets that the old one died in service. The random orbital sander was the only one left standing five years ago when buildin Passion X so it had done some heavy sanding. For the replacement I went for a more powerful 150 mm size with 44 % more sanding area which should speed up the heavy sanding on the hull but I will buy a more gentle 125 mm one for the interior sanding. I use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust through the sander and it has the added advantage of pulling the random orbital head down onto the work piece.
Drilling the bolt holes piecemeal has advantages and disadvantages. With the limited home handyman tools the full depth holes would a special bit to do the 190 mm depth. By doing each element if the hole is a fraction of a millimeter out it can easily be corrected. For the 85 mm holes through the keel floors I was able to set the floors up horizontal in the drill press and drill most of the way through. The remaining depth was completed by hand but with a deep hole as a guide. So far 145 mm of the depth is completed and the king plank and hardwood spacer on the bottom can be predrilled to the bold pattern and the holes used to pull them together.
There are lots of options for the next tasks and I am leaning towards completing the engine beds from bulkhead F to H and the kingplank from bulkhead C right back to the floor behind bulkhead F. Most of that is under cover and when complete will give a solid backbone.

Another two weeks have passed and the keel floors are still a work in progress. I will lay some of the blame at the feet of the floods or at least the constant downpours but now that the rain has abated and some semblance of normal conditions has returned there must be other reasons.
The keel floors are much larger. They have grown from 80 by 50 laminates on Passion X to 125 by 85 on the new build so there is more timber and much more glue. The easily handled eight layers of 6 mm laminates has grown to fourteen laminations. which I did in two stages compared to the one stage process on Passion X. I think it would be fair to say that there is four times as much work in the timber so I am a bit surprised at how long it is taking. The floors in Passion X are very substantial but with the large increase in dimension there is more floor than space in some sections which means I cannot fit my head up through the gaps to take measurements. On the upside my monkey climbing skills are improving as I clamber out from under the gunwales to up the ladder and along the strong back to check a measurement from above. After a day of this I feel like I have had a very long work out at the gym.
Did I mention how heavy these keel floors are and how I am holding them up one handed while fitting clamps. It must be doing an amazing amount of good and I look forward to the benefits down the track.
All this clamping meant more trips to the hardware store for more clamps for now I have double the quantity I used for the Passion X build.
Being optimistic I am hopeful that once past the massive keel floors the work will be similar to Passion X but there is a bit of work ahead to get to that stage.
A very important stage to get past is the blocking of the keel frames to the hull. For the section between the 85 mm deep laminate and the 30 mm deep strong back I have opted for multiple layers of 6 mm timber across the hull all the way out to the first stringer. I feel this will give me a better bond than trying to infill a 125 mm wide by 44 mm deep space between the floor and the 12 mm plywood skin. For the rest of the infill all that is required is 44 mm thick by 125 mm wide lumber of good quality and that might be four 31 mm by 44 mm high blocks on edge so hopefully that will go quickly.

It is almost three weeks since my last post on the keel floors and not much seems to have happened. We did take a break and drive to Queensland where I helped son Mark with some concrete block retaining walls but allowing for that progress stills seems to be slow.
The front floor which we will call 1 had to be done in five stages as the very sharp bend around the radius chine required a lot of pressure and the most I could manage was two 6 mm laminates at a time. So all up that was one gluing session for the first series of short lengths which form the V and the taper of the floor and four sessions each gluing two more with full length laminates to what had already been glued up. With hindsight which is a wonderful thing we should have laminated the frame before installing the chain plate frames as the shape where they meet clashed with the laminates before they were pulled into shape. So as the laminates were clamped to the previously cured frame the whole structure had to be pushed hard up against the chain plate frame.
I was relieved to get that first ring frame completed and start on the short floors which have a shallow V and a taper from 83 mm down to 50 mm at the outboard end. I found it easiest to glue up the laminates that would form the taper and the V first and then clamp the remaining 8 full length laminates to the curved section on the shop floor. The first six lengths making up the taper are comprised of successively longer sections until the last is full length and that makes for a light laminate that can be handled with ease.
As of the 3rd March four of the keel floors are glued up and a two more have the V and taper section formed and only need the full length laminates glued in place on the shop floor. The last floor is the narrower one that goes under the engine and that is mostly cut. Being narrower it should be easy to handle once the rain stops and work outside can recommence.
If you don’t know what rain I am talking about it is the one in 500 year rain event hitting sections of the East Coast of Australia.

In the first photo you can see a foil section which is the size of the top of the keel. I am making up a drilling template ready for drilling the strongback and the keelson. So far I have cut 4 layers of 12 mm hardwood ply ready to make a 48 mm thick guide to hold the drill bit straight. It is an idea and a work in progress.

After a pretty wet series of Wednesday night the weather on the 16th of February had taken a turn for the better with a warm sunny evening and a fresh breeze. Being a little on the tender side we were a bit apprehensive about our choice of our No 1 heavy genoa but as the race wore on and the wind abated a few knots we made full use of the sail area to notch up another fourth place on handicap.
At the start it was Utopia, Joli and Meridian showing the way. We were next trying hard to stay ahead of Ausreo and Jackpot in the lottery around Greenwich Point. Utopia got into the breeze first and was off like a rocket followed by Joli and Meridian. Jackpot climbed to windward of us and ahead while Fireball did one better and climbed ahead too. From Humbug to Goat Island that was the general order although to be fair we lost sight of the leaders around Goat island the first time and only caught a glimpse of Joli on the second rounding of Goat Island.

Back at the first rounding of Goat Island we somehow managed to get past Fireball and hang on to the tail of Jackpot albeit at a respectable distance. As the breeze backed off a little we had a good run back to Cockatoo island and a work back to Goat island where we seemed to stretch out the gap to Fireball, Ausreo and Sweet Chariot. The main interest for us was staying as close to Jackpot as we could.

On the reach home to Humbug and the work up to the finish Fireball made up a lot of ground so that at the finish we beat her on handicap by just one second with Ausreo just 15 seconds behind.

With the results published it shows what a good race Meridian had being beaten for fastest by just 4 seconds by Utopia but alas the timing was wrong by about 90 seconds. After the presentation where Passion X scored a bottle of wine for third on handicap the results were corrected and Utopia pipped us by a few seconds. So OK Utopia got the points but we kept the bottle of wine.

It was fitting then that Meridian scored first place from Joli and with Utpoia third and just that little bit of luck Passion X was that 1 second in front of Fireball.

Well that was the last of the fine weather as the next weeks the racing was abandoned for lack of wind.

That brings us up to 2nd March which is the first week of Autumn down here in Australia and what a start to Autumn it has been. There have been historic flooding events all the way down the East Cost and we have had and still have our adult children who live in Northern NSW flooded in and waiting for roads to open to restock on food.

The rain has now reached Sydney with the worst expected this evening so it was only right that the sailing was again abandoned if only to keep the competitors off the roads

I have been apprehensive about cutting the 125 mm wide by 6 mm deep keel floor laminations and fitting them to the hull because of the dimensions. The longest laminates are over three metres and curve around the hull from the upper tangent on one side to the upper tangent on the opposite side. Because of my concerns I decided to tackle this first and discover the issues along the way..
The saw cutting went quite well cutting 70 mm deep into the 125 mm wide plank and turning the plank over and doing a second cut. The roughly 8 mm planks were then thicknessed down to 6 mm.
The day’s task was going slowly with the old saw bench occasionally going out on overload until the motor died. That called for a quick trip to the tool store and an hour later I was home assembling a new more powerful unit.
Taking up from where I left off the cutting proceeded much faster and with greater accuracy.

Late in the day Elaine and I spent hours cleaning up the sawdust and shavings but had enough planks cut for the first large floor and a bit to spare.
That had been a big day sorting and restacking my lumber supplies, cutting the timber and cleaning up so Wednesday was a quieter day glassing one side of a plywood splice and doing a tiny fillet but somehow I was satisfied with that as we had an early finish to leave for our Wednesday twilight race.
Last week had been a sailing disaster as on leaving our mooring the raw water pump on the engine seized and we could not compete.
In one moment we went from leading the series to runner up as there was no drop available.
The pump failure was disappointing on two fronts. Firstly the shaft seal on the pump failed after five years and secondly that I did not replace the bearings when I changed the seal.
The remedy was simple. Buy a new pump on the way to the Laser Masters Regatta at Port Stephens and then after a grueling weekend sailing in over 25 knots rise early Monday morning and change the pump.
Monday was a pretty miserable day with lots of showers but the swap was achieved in the morning and the engine run for an hour to be sure.
On return home it was still raining so I overhauled the failed pump to ensure I had a spare on board. It is not practical to change bearings at sea so a spare pump seems to be a must for any serious ocean sailing. The bearings in the raw water pump had failed spectacularly. The ball cages were mangled, balls were missing and the seals had failed. It does raise the question as to how we had not heard the progressive failure so perhaps the sound insulation in the motor compartment is too good.
This Wednesday was much more satisfying as we had ideal twilight racing conditions and courtesy of a generous handicap scored a third place and maintained our lead in the series. All the crew stayed for the post race BBQ in the best conditions so far this season and we scored a bottle of wine.

Utopia won from Fireball but it was close at the front on handicap. We had a good start but were run over in Humbug by Ausreo and Fireball while Sweet Chariot did a bolter to leeward and deserved a better result on the night as it took us a third of the race to catch them. We made up a bot of ground on the free leg from Goat Island back to Cockatoo and for a few moments had Joli in view but once around the island she was off and away. Meridian also pulled away on this leg as we did not enjoy sailing in her dirty air.

Thursday became D day for starting the keel floors and thanks to some prompt work by Dudley Dix we resolved all the angles and settled on a procedure for laminating the 13 layers of 6 mm timber to form these massive keel floors. As of this evening the first 5 layers are glued up inside the hull and the epoxy has cured hard in the 30 degrees Celsius weather. Tomorrow the aim is to clean up the first lamination and do a second batch of four layers each 3.1 metres long.

In the meantime the chainplate frames have been installed and glued to the stringers. The 36 mm wide frames are held rigidly by glue on the stringers and have already been planed down ready to affix the external plywood skin.

Everything has to be done sometime so I have a long list of small tasks to complete as well as big ones but I would like to get these 3.1 metre keel floors finished as this opens up my choices of tasks depending on the conditions.

I am running a list of possible construction tasks from which to pick as the conditions dictate. The list does have sequences where some tasks have to be finished before the next one for ease of construction. For example to fit the base of the anchor locker at the bow I left one of the side stringers loose until the base was installed. Due to the triangular shape of the base and the stringers that run mid way through the length of the base it would be impossible to make a neat fit. Even with the loose stringer it was still tricky and I should have left the stringer doubler off the bulkhead as that 9 mm was critical. Being such small item it was easy enough to notch the base to get it to fit but it would have been neater and not required the small infill piece.

Before installing the base I filleted the bulkhead to the skin while I could stand on the ground. On the second side I will have to crawl into the locker under the anchor locker to do the filleting so I am on the lookout for tasks that are easier to do early rather than late.

Monday was an early start to pick up Passion X from Woolwich Dock after her annual antifouling but we still managed to get the first sheet of 12 mm ply installed on the starboard side albeit a late finish. Today we installed the second sheet on the starboard side so that both sides are fitted back to bulkhead D. When I say we I mean Elaine and I as we are getting into quite a productive routine with Elaine selecting the screws and placing them in the pre drilled holes so that I can run along with the impact drill and finish the job. The impact drill was a thoughtful Christmas present from two of the children and it has proven a great acquisition. One drill for the hole, another for the countersink and lastly the impact drill to drive the screws home and pull the plywood down to the stringers.

Today was quite an effort as the temperature soared into the 30’s making gluing impractical until the cool of the evening. Then as the afternoon wore on the rain clouds started to gather. As it was we timed it to perfection and had all the holes pre drilled and pre counter sunk so we could pull the glue surface faces together before the glue set.

While waiting for the temperature to drop I fitted one of the chainplate frames again to double check my position. With a range of clamps and temporary stringers I had it firmly fixed in place so as a last task before the rain hit I fixed it to the stringers with thickened epoxy. Once that has set I should be able to remove some of the clamps and install the other two thicknesses of 12 mm ply on the port side and then repeat the process on the starboard side.
While waiting for glue to cure I have still to fit bulkhead doublers for the next sheet of ply and there is bulkhead filletting piling up behind the sheeting.

Looking ahead I think the next milestone will be to get the chainplate frames installed and braced with the settee shelves so that they become an integral part of the structure. Then I can trim the excess on the hull side and fit the next sheet on both sides.

Last Friday I was ready to fix the first sheets of plywood to the hull but the wet weather intervened and the hull was double tarped to keep her dry. Saturday and Sunday are Laser sailing days and the first order of duty on Monday was to get Passion X to Woolwich Dock for the annual antifouling.

With what was left of Monday I fitted some ply doublers to the bulkheads where the stringers are attached. These are fitted on the forward side of the forward bulkheads and on the aft side of the aft bulkheads where they would be very difficult to fit at a later date. And so it was that the first sheet of ply was fixed to the hull on Tuesday afternoon with help from Elaine.
The process of cleaning up all the glue from the joins so that the glue lines are full of glue and any surplus is removed before the glue sets rock hard is quite time consuming. My Dad would use his bare fingers to force the surplus glue into the joins on my moulded Moths but I use good quality gloves most of the time.

The second sheet went up today, Australia Day. We made an early start while the temperature was still low and had the sheet installed and cleaned up before lunch.
The rest of the day was spent preparing the other side of the hull for sheeting but I won’t be rushing into it.

Before fixing the first two sheets to the starboard side I have a dozen ply doublers to fit to the stringers, a set of shelves to fit and critically the floor to my anchor locker. I have left one stringer at the bow loose so that the anchor locker floor can be inserted and glued in place from outside the hull. The anchor locker base will brace the bow in much the same way as the deck would.

I am very happy with the first two sheets fitted and hope that the other side goes as well.

Wednesday was a forgettable day with cool wet conditions and not enough wind to finish a short course. The cut off time is 8:15 pm regardless of the start time for the different fleets and at 8:00 pm our position was hopeless so we started the engine and motored to the finish line to see if anyone would make it. A few of the early starters did finish but for the majority it was a wet, windless and win less night. With no post race BBQ it was a quick dash home to dry clothes and poached salmon and salad dinner.
With no race results to report there was no rush to print but for other reasons it has been an interesting week.
On Thursday Elaine and I had our vaccine booster shots and while she seemed energized, I was a bit flat for a few days and really only came back to life on Monday.
Saturday was a long haul to Gosford for the Laser racing and with a up and back course and a big shift in the wind it ended up reaching both ways for a pretty uninteresting race. Sunday was no better with the Middle Harbour Amateurs cancelling the club championship due to the tsunami warning. This was the right call given the circumstances so I dashed home to pick up some hardware from Bunnings. Now every visit to Bunnings seems to be accompanied by another Covid alert so I scored two alerts for the day.

Monday I was up early to visit Passion X and replace the raw water inlet pump shaft seal. This is a ten dollar seal which retails for something more substantial but you do need the genuine part don’t you? After watching a couple of different U tube videos on how to replace the part I was confident it would be an easy task if done with an impeller replacement. It was and by 11 am the task was complete and the engine running without a trace of a leak. One of the tips from U tube was to use an appropriately sized socket to push the seal evenly along the shaft and into the recess and that worked a treat. The next hour was spent mopping up every last drop of salt water that had leaked through the seal into the bilges. It was a good test of the bilge pump and I can report that the bilge pump works very well as long as you hold the float switch up until the last dregs are pumped away. Next there was a bit of mildew to wipe off the settee fronts above the bilges where the water had been sitting since last Wednesday’s wet and windless non race. Normally the bilges are bone dry and mildew is not a problem so hopefully we will resume normal conditions from now.

So with not much sailing to report how is the boat building going you might ask.

All the stringers are in and the critical path is waiting for the keel floor beam details to be completed. In the meantime everything has to be done some time so I am doing the time consuming tasks now like fitting cupboard shelves and chainplate frames.

Twelve shelves have been fitted and there are four more to do. It helps that the hull is very true and a shelf on the port side can be turned over and fit the starboard side. There is some angling of the edges needed where the mirror image requirements have to be met but in general it has been a lot faster than anticipated.

I do have lots of little doublers to go over the stringers at each bulkhead and with 9 stringers a side and twelve bulkheads and one each side you can arrive at a number of 432 but that would be misleading. There are also bunk stringers to count and there are deductions. Many locations have a widened attachment point due to the intersection of cleats from different directions and some will have a doubler on one side and a thickened epoxy fairing on the other. I have a good supply of 12 mm ply doublers ready to go but I need to make a large number of 9 mm ones for the 9 mm ply bulkheads.
On Passion X the stringer doublers were finished square but on the new build I am rounding the edges of the doublers with a router to remove the hard edge. The hard edge looks modern but the rounded edge looks more traditional.

First the Wednesday sailing results and that makes it two wins in a row. Last night was special because we picked the breeze well and were up with Utopia at Goat Island after a windward work and we managed to hold out Joli to the finish. It was a bit more exciting than that because even though the fleet was reduced for the holidays and Covid caution it was still sailed seriously. At the start we opted the port tack but Joli continued on starboard tack well after the gun and forced us beyond head to wind into a stalled tack. The sailing gods have a way of giving it back and on the run through Humbug we caught the fleet because of freshening wind from behind and then Kevin spotted wind on the left so we pointed up to it and then ran away for a handy lead at Cockatoo Island.

Around Cockatoo the quicker Utopia ran past but on the windward work we picked every shift right and even the covering tacks were onto lifts. While we were pleased with out tacks, Joli still gained on both of us by Goat Island.
Approaching Goat we were lining up to cross on port in front of Utopia on starboard. I thought we were well clear but just before we reached their line a strong gust rounded Passion X up and into an involuntary tack so we will never know if we would have crossed.
From there Utopia had us covered and we could not tack to round the island until they did. it is just as well that they held us up as we had a pretty significant header going into the rounding and that is where Joli on starboard lifted to the mark and made up ground.
From there it was a run home with Joli coming at us with breeze behind and then us pulling away when the breeze arrived. We had two more breaks our way, the first the freshening header approaching Humbug where with our jib held out we were able to come onto the reach quickly while Joli with the pole up had to run away. The second was sailing through Humbug without having to tack.
Ausreo was there but the light shifty conditions are not her strong point and she and crew wait patiently for stronger winds.

Between showers I took the covers off the new build and took some photos because with the forecast the covers could be on for a week. Lucky me the rain held off and I managed to glue another three stringers into their positions.

I can now glue in the side stringers except the No 1 at the bow where I have to leave it loose to fit the anchor locker floor. I might install the 12 mm ply sheeting on one side first before removing the very strong temporary brace that has been holding the stem while all stringers have been fixed in place. Anyway it is a debate I am having with myself because on Passion X all the internal furniture was fitted before I started sheeting but I would like to complete the skin back to the mast step so that I can leave the covers over that end.

I keep looking at my boat building efforts and thinking that there has not been much progress. That is true because since my last post I have worked less than six days on the project. The other time has been sailing the Laser or Passion X and celebrating Christmas with the family .
We spent Christmas at Ballina hoping to cross the border into Queensland after our Covid test on the 24th. Christmas was great with a limited family gathering appropriate to the times but the border crossing into Queensland was a non event as the Covid test result was delayed beyond the 72 hour window we needed to get into Qld and the chance of another test result in time was negligible. Instead of a week in Buderim with our son Mark we had an hour face to face with his family on the border at Tweed Heads and headed back home the next day.

Wet weather prior to Christmas and my own plodding progress had dashed any hope of finishing all the stringers before our trip North but now with the unexpected early return home here was a chance to catch up.

As my new project is a prototype there are some surprises in the construction and the biggest obstacle to a speedy finish was fitting the 12 mm by 100 mm ply strips to the tangent stringers. This is the place where the flat sides and bottom meet the moulded ply chine so it is important to get it right. On Passion X the standard practice was to fit short lengths between the bulkheads. With the new design we opted for a continuous strip from front to back with slots cut in the bulkhead. The thinking was to join the lengths and add them to the hull in one go. Well that was far too optimistic as the front end of each strip had to be shaped to fit the bow and a 12 metre length was never going to behave. The next issue was the sweep of the bottom tangent stringer which is much more pronounced that on Passion X. I opted to cut slots half way through the 100 mm to torture the plywood into the required curve with lots of clamps and screws for good measure and the end result looks fine. It certainly looks much sweeter than the series of straight strips on Passion X but the other option of cutting the strips into the required curve is possible the easier one for future builders. The upper tangent is a slow curve and the plywood easily followed this sweet line.
There are now enough stringers fastened down for the hull to be easily covered with tarpaulins if the weather turns wet again.
The challenge ahead is to fix the remaining stringers in position and catch up to my original program by the time we would have returned from Queensland.
I have a lot of options to move forward including starting on some of the furniture elements that are better fitted before the skin goes on or I could skin the bow back to the mast step or I could skin from the gunwales to the upper tangent along the whole length.

What I cannot do yet is skin the bottom from the mast step back as we are still designing the floor structure. What I can reveal is that we have decided on a keel depth and weight. After much consultation with Dudley Dix we have settled on a 2400 kg keel at 2.6 metres draft which means the keel projects around 2.2 metres below the hull canoe body. With the extra beam and the deeper heavier keel the righting moments should be 50% more than the original Didi 40 CR and 40% more than Passion X so there will be a good increase in sail carrying ability. Obviously the extra weight and depth means a more robust keel structure and we are working through that now. It is not on the critical path as I have all the options mentioned above. It is nice to have these choices.

Way back on 27th of November I posted a photo on facebook of the new build covered with tarpaulins and today it looks little different so what has been going on?

At the 27th November all the bulkheads had been fitted but no stringers, backbone or sheer clamps.
In the intervening 19 days all the 22 by 44 stringers have been cut from 285 mm by 32 mm wide planks which means two cuts for each stringer then thicknessed, scarf joined and edge routered. The 22mm by 32 mm tangent stringers needed only one cut per stringer but they still had to be thicknessed to 22 mm, scarf joined and edge routered. Then there was the 100 mm by 12 mm ply doubler for the tangent stringers which had to be cut, joined and had the edges routered.

Fitting the strongback was an important task not to be rushed and I had to take 2 mm of the planks and re router the edges before finally gluing it in place over a two day period.
While fitting the strongback the stem and stern knees had to be installed locking the elements together and then the stem knee had to have 12 mm ply doubles added to build it up to 48 mm thick.

Next in line was the sheer clamp and at this stage the port one is fitted while the starboard is biding her time waiting for her turn. With a bit of fine weather that will be tomorrow but if it rains and the gluing surfaces get wet the job will have to be delayed.

To be not too harsh on myself the weather has been not very boat building friendly and while the centre of the build is protected rain can still blow through and delay proceedings.
Another factor in the seeming measured progress is the care I am taking to keep the bulkheads straight. My budget of one stiffener per bulkhead soon blew out with up to three being required for the thinner 9 mm bulkheads but the time taken is proving well worth the effort as the sheer clamps are going on without deflecting the outboard edges of the bulkheads

A win is a win and we will take it. Thanks to Harbour Dive Services for keeping the bottom clean all winter and special thanks to the loyal crew who fronted up come rain or wind. As a result of sailing all the series races we had a handy lead over Utopia going into the last race but with a fleet of eight starters the series was still wide open.
We did make a good start on the pin end of the line only to have the wind disappear for a few minutes. The slender lead we had was soon overhauled by Utopia who with a clean bottom were keen to show what they could do. Meridian, Jackpot and who knows who else soon ran over the top of us going through Humbug but we had a trick or two up our sleeve. The breeze kept filling back in from the left so we reached out to the port side of the fleet and with the advantage of wind and angle managed to go over the top of everyone except Utopia.
Down the left of Cockatoo Island John Ewing off of Utopia took some very nice photos of Passion X which was pleasing as we had our daughter Natalie and her three boys on board for the race. Otis looked after the skirting while Reuben tailed for Mal and Don and we need them back every week. Hugo kept a close eye on the action and will soon be an expert tailer.

With the No 1 heavy poled out we managed to keep just in front of Jackpot to the corner of Spectacle Island but once on the work back to Goat Island we were overtaken by by Joli and Meridian. For a shore while we traded tacks with Joli and Meridian but they were soon away while somewhere a long way back was Agrovation, Sweet Chariot and Ausreo.

On the beat to Goat the breeze was shifting in direction and velocity but mostly it was dying giving the front runners a double advantage of being further up the course and the time to cover the distance widening.
After what seemed an eternity we rounded Goat Island and took off after the fleet who were now well down the track to Long Nose. Every so often a wisp of wind would come over the beam giving us optimism that we might finish the race within the time limit. Any thought of a handicap win had long vanished but we could see Utopia stuck in Humbug while Joli found her own breeze and sailed through for a third place on handicap behind the front runner Jackpot.
We felt that we had made up enough time on Utopia to finish ahead and that was the case. Also we had caught up to Meridian and while we did not pass them we were sure to finish ahead on handicap.
As we drifted across the line we turned to see who was behind and to our amazement there was Sweet Chariot running through Humbug in 20 knots of breeze and certain of a good second place on handicap.
Meantime back in the pre wind era Agrovation and Ausreo had retired leaving too few handicap place points for Jackpot to beat us.

For the past two days I have been preparing the bulkheads to take the now completed strong back. That means stiffening the uprights with some diagonal bracing and installing some cross beams to keep the light plywood frames straight.
I had planned for one cross beam for each bulkhead but in practice I found that two or three were needed to keep the plywood as straight as I wished it to be.

While the amount of bracing may seem excessive to some it is in my opinion needed to stop the bulkhead shifting while attaching the strong back and gunwale stringers. Once these are glued in place some of the bracing will be removed while some will stay in place until the bulkheads are stiffened by installing furniture elements.

With the rear third of the bulkheads stiffened I installed the strong back for the last trial fit and to router the slot for the stem knee. As it all fitted well I applied the thickened epoxy and fastened the rear section in place.

About now the heavens opened up for the second day in a row and brought an abrupt end to construction. Nevertheless the glue was secure under the tarpaulins and the scarf joins dry clamped waiting for a sunny day.

Under the boat awning and under the tarpaulins covering the transom I cleaned up the excess epoxy glue until the intensity of the rain forced me to retreat indoors.

Yesterday I finished early to go sailing in the Greenwich Flying Squadron twilight race and while we were rigged and ready the racing was abandoned due to the lightening risk. So I was wet yesterday and wet today.
If it is wet tomorrow I will try to find a dry spot to complete the gunwale stringers as I need to make up time for all the lost construction due to the weather.

Our neighbour was away for a week which was pretty handy since I was making a din rounding the inboard edges of stringers close to his front door. He is a very supportive neighbour but his comment that I had made little progress in a week was a bit flattening. Yes it does not look like a lot of progress since I fitted any stringers I had to get the boat under cover a week ago. In the meantime I had cut, thicknesses and joined all the 44 by 22 mm stringers and removed the temporary 32 by 22 from the hull. So he was quite right as it looked the same despite my furious pace of work.

Yesterday I spliced the 32 by 22 stringers, augmented the width of the strong back and glued up the stem and transom knees.

Today the strong back was cleaned up and planed to the final 30 mm thickness. The 300 mm wide strong back is at the limit of the thicknesser but it did the job nicely and made a lot of sawdust.

The knees were trial fitted, the stern knee to the strong back and the bow knee to station 0. I was planning on a trial fit of the strong back to the bow knee but a heavy shower put paid to that idea. I did however manage to shape all the strong back cleats ready for the trial fit.

I have one more day of making sawdust and noise before I can give the neighbours a rest from the noise. That is to thickness the gunwales and cut the outer edges on 45 degrees to minimise the amount of planing once fitted.

No this does not describe our sailing on Passion X but rather the work I am doing on building a new yacht. A week ago with impending heavy rain I fitted in some under size stringers into the slots and threw tarpaulins over the construction. That worked out well as I could continue work in the 12 metre long carport. Being too wet to work anywhere on Saturday I took the trip to Gosford only to turn around and not sail in the 30 knots breeze. No such luxury was available on Sunday for the short spring series in shifty 20 knots of breeze. I did manage a second in the series despite getting stuck in irons in the first two races but after that I was pretty happy with the boat speed.

Monday was still miserable but I managed to cut all the 44 by 22 stringers before retiring wet. Tuesday was a better day and all the 44 by 22 stringers had their ends cut on an angle ready for splicing together. Much of the day was spent selecting lengths so that the joins were not all in the same position in the yacht. By the end of day I retired injured. Not really injured but the hands were sore so I gave myself an early mark. Wednesday the scarf joins were paired and matched with a small block plane which meant a lot of turning stringers around and back again but the result is exceptional.

Today is Thursday and the second batch of stringer were match planed and glued up.
Not wanting to leave anything for later I rounded the inboard edges of the stringers so not only will they look good during production but the chances of splinters is much reduced.
While the glue on the second batch of stringers was curing nicely in the warm afternoon I took the already completed batch to the building site and dry fitted stringers just under half of the stringer to the hull.
After dark I carted the heavy strong back to the carport to check if there was any movement post cutting. It looks perfect so there is little work to do to get that ready too.
Tomorrow I am going to try to join the tangent stringers as that will give me all the elements ready to complete the stringers, gunwales and strong back by Christmas.