In the ten days since the last post I have made steady progress helped by a few crew who devoted several hours to sanding both inside and outside the hull.
Before that the furniture in the galley and quarter berth ante room had been fitted and the filleting of the bulkheads to the skin completed.
An unexpected task was to extend the gussets on the rudder port out another 200 mm each side and fix in with four layers of 450 gram double bias epoxy glass. This was a change Dudley had advised back in September 2002 but which had slipped my mind until Dudly gently reminded me via a request for an updated photo. I promptly did the change and sent out the photo but it took the best part of two days to fit the gussets and then glass them in place in the upside down position. Once the hull is turned I will add more glass around the port and the strongback for appearance sake and to tidy up the finish on the glass.
Last Wednesday was another steady result on the water with Passion X. We won the race on the run to the top mark by an inside overlap on Allegro but an override on the mainsheet winch stopped us following the fleet inshore where they picked a big lift. Despite dropping a few positions we sailed well to make up ground and finish with a 4th place on handicap. It was another good result in strong winds with a reef in the main and the No 3 jib.
This coming week looks like a complete change to a drift but there is still a few days to go.
After the crew assistance with sanding I decided to get a little more aggressive with the torture board on the last four coats of epoxy primer to remove the remaining uneveness in the bottom panels. I had roller coated the bottom due to the wind conditions and that needed more sanding than the sprayed sides. Also I had overlapped the four sprayed coats from the sides with the four coats on the bottom around the radius chine so on the radius chine I had a lot of paint to help with the fairing.
On the bottom the design has three layers of 450 gram double bias glass along the centre line and each layer is wider than the next to achieve a taper from the glassed section to the unglassed section. Now the glass is 1.5 mm thick as a minimum and the taper was not over a wide enough area to remove the appearance of a hollow along the keel line. While this was by design I decided to use the opportunity of an aggressive torture boarding to take off the glass high spots and fill the long hollows. Three days later the bottom is bogged up ready for a final fairing and another two coats of epoxy primer hopefully in more favourable wind conditions.
