keel complete & Race sails

Donna picked up our 'new' (second-hand/ pre-loved) race sails a sail-maker who sold them to us at a very reasonable price after a tip off that he had them from one of his employees.
We've got them home for a quick look and will be sending them off to our sail-maker for repairs and alterations. We should have them done by the end of next week.

The cruising sail over the top of the yet to be altered race sail,

and yes the square top will be about that big.

 

For a second-hand jib it fits exceedingly well, we're very happy with it as is.

 

 

We both like this race main a lot, nice and big. See the bricks next to the trailer,

that's my bulb lifting machinery..

 

 

I got the bulb under the hull with only minor amounts of frustration which was only really caused by a lack of space to move under the hull. I used house bricks one at a time at each end to slowly pick up each end at a time. This worked well, I only dropped the bulb once!,  with very little damage done.
It's great to see the completed keel in 'Charlene', mast up and keel in it feels like a real sailing boat now.

Ugly shape but it's lead and it's in the right place under the hull.

The bulb is 86kg and the blade 13kg.

View from behind.

 

 

We're so close, the only thing we still need to get in the water in racing trim is a spinnaker of an appropriate size for racing, thanks to Jon Raymond (i550 president) we have our old green and pink spinnaker we used on 'Shazza' on her first ever kite run.