Wednesday 30 January 2008

The build race is on.

Martin Zäh and I are now in a race to fly. We have challenged each other to be the first to fly our new builds.

Actually I challenged him because I am further ahead and have a spare boat that I can take bits off, so I have a very good change of winning. However the Brits are very good at making up rules for sports and then getting beaten by the rest of the world at their own games so it could be close.

I am in the middle of a flat move chaos at the moment and so Martin may catch up if his dog does not attack him again.

The prize is a beer at the worlds.


In other Moth news:

Niki has made a adjustable main foil. He can shorten it by about 15 cm for flaying on out big shallow windy lake near Vienna. 15cm may not make a huge difference but he can always chop it off and try again if the concept works.

Si Payne has got some mystery white bits he is not showing. I am sure this is mostly a whined up but maybe John has developed a way to tune the control mechanism. Course for strong winds and fine for light? Change the phase of the mechanism? Split the flap for moving the center of lift to leeward? Or is it the iPod holder with external speakers he has always wanted fitted in his boat?

Back to an evening of shifting boxes, rugs and wardrobes and cleaning away tools and floors etc... If you are lucky I will show you the white bits of my Kitchen soon but this is a more secret development than the Moth iPod holder.

Doug

Sunday 27 January 2008

Deck Laminated

On Saturday I got the deck laminated.



The next two weeks will be taken up with moving flat so I think the Flahheart will be on hold for a while. The next jobs are the wing structures and working out the fitting arrangements, and wand control etc...

Friday 25 January 2008

Getting Keen

I must been keen, I sat in Vienna traffic jams for an hour so that I could go to the workshop after work yesterday. I got the decks trimmed so that on Sat I can laminate the deck.

Friday 18 January 2008

Europe builds

There are various home build projects going on in Europe at the moment.

Martin Zäh from Zurich sent me a picture of his build. He is having a building break after his dog bit him in the hand! The boat is made of 3mm Airex foam and 160g/m2 carbon, so it should be light. Like me he did not use a mold.



He has a V shaped deck and lots of internal structure like Felix . I am going for a flat deck and very little structure. It looks like he has a high foredeck where as I and Felix are going for low profile foredecks... Adam sent me a pic of his boat which he has modified to cut away the foredeck even more. Fashion or evolution and experimentation?

The peal ply arrived and I hear from Mike that the rudder is underway. I hope that on Sunday I can trim the decks and get it ready for the deck outer skin lamination.

My home build kitchen project in the flat in about half way there and I am am still alive after getting a shock because the electrician is an idiot and wires switches to have on, off and maybe settings. What is the point of having a safety swich on the circuit if it only switches one of the power lines off? Tosser. I am sure all you Internet Mothies are disparate to see pictures of my kitchen but I am keeping that top secret development under wraps for the moment.

Got to get the IMCA database on-line which involves a couple of evenings work and email writing. However there is one feature that is missing that Koos pointed out and is now becoming important. I need to program the usecase where a committee member adds a user manually.... This may have to wait for the next release. I also want to have a look at the registration process again to see if I can stop people registering 10 times and messing up my beautiful entity data model. However I think is a problem inherent in every database. I am not sure when I will get a couple of free evenings as the home building (new flat) project is taking up all my time, but I hope to do it soon.

Sunday 13 January 2008

Deck on.

With Niki's help I got the deck and fordeck bogged on the Flasheart today.

Wednesday 2 January 2008

Ho Ho Ho...

My resin delivery arrived just in time so I managed to get in a day and a half in the workshop over Xmas. I also had a days help thanks to Niki.

We managed to:
- Bog in the centerboard box.
- Tape bulkheads and transom.
- Tape the fore-deck inside join.
- Finish off the wing bar sleeves and get them bogged into the boat.
- Start to build up a gantry bottom attachment on the transom.
- Bog gantry bottom diagonals.



All the time consuming jigging and positioning is over. I spent ages doing 3D trigonometry to work out what angle to glue the sleeves to each other at. I then glued the Vs into the boat. I hope I got the angle right...

She is starting to look more and more like a Moth.



I have also done some Flashheart documentation updates and fixed / republished it.

The next jobs are tape the wing bar sleeves and box in. I can then work towards getting the decks on, both of which are ready for fitting. I have to do the king post and forward compression strut too and then all the main boat structure is done. then it is wing bars, fittings, wand, prodder, gantry, tramps, foils, paint, rigging and and and ....

I have also ordered a new rudder from Aardvark. I am not sure about the upturned tips on the rudder but at least it looks cool. Mike sent me some pictures of his new rudder and it looks great. I will have to make a stock so that I can slide it up and down rather than it being fixed. This will later enable me to try and develop a short set of foils system for sailing on our shallow lake.

Adam posted some great pictures form years ago (about 15 years) when we messed around in our Int 14. I noticed that I was wearing the same winter wet-suit that I was complaining about at the bottom of my earlier post here. I am very pleased to report that the Christkind sorted me out with a brand new winter wet-suit so I will be ready for sailing in spring. Not sure if the boat will be but I should get another day in next Sunday. After that I should get the keys to a flat I have just bought so I will have to shift focus to building a kitchen rather than a Moth. I will also have zero cash for fittings which I have to start to think about...



Here is one picture Adam did not post but he kindly sent it to me. It shows the bean on the spinnaker. The story is that a great sail-making friend of mine repaired the spinnaker for us and drew on a big SYBYC Bean on it for luck. My mate and the bean got a bit excited which was visible on the bean thanks to a 2ft high erection. Of course my mate did not mention this and hoped we would rig the thing in a hurry and use it on its first outing at the Bloody Mary (big winter handicap event in London). Due to a broken down car we did not make it for the start and so we were spared the - SHIT what is that??? Oh God No!!! Take it down quick. No leave it up we need it panic. I later scribbled a pair of Y fronts on the bean so we could get away with using it as long as no one looked too closely...