Two-up race/drift

Another good sail today. I learnt a lot more about Charlene today. Charlene Mkll is quiet a different beast to the old Charlene. She's 'smoother' through the water and the boat accelerates with the big black kite now rather than just laying over when running shy. The big black monster just isn't a monster anymore and is now very much my favourite now that it's behaving.
We had our 'chicken' kite up for most of the ride today because I just wanted to play it conservative and also not scare Donna. That went well because we could both get to know the boat (Donna hopefully loosing the fear, and me just getting to know how to trim her and what she did and didn't like).

We have sorted a lot of minor issues from last time out, including the keel fore/aft movement which has been fixed up with thicker shims. We also built a new engine mount for the new 4hp engine purchased last week. This has created a problem, the main sheet bridle keeps getting court on the engine. We should be able to fix this with a bit of shock cord tied to the bridle to keep it tight and not allow it to get near the engine when it would be otherwise loose.

Charlene Two-up Short video from today, not too exciting.

Today's weather was pleasant but we ended up abandoning the race after loosing pressure for a while after a fair amount of 2/3kt drifting. I had learnt enough for the day and Donna wasn't well so we got the sails down and turned on the nice new engine and headed for the boat ramp and trailer. The next race is in a couple of weeks which is now unimportant because we haven't finished 3 out the first 4 races.

Our next race should be with our new racing main which will be being made next week or the week after. The current race main, used today, has been fitted with track 'slugs' and is now our cruising main and is was really easy for Donna and I to manage to raise and lower while out on the water (the new more easily controlled and more torque engine also helped that).
 

Winter series race.

Our first race was on Saturday just gone, and it was also our first sail since rebuilding Charlene. We had Donna and I, and Mark, our new friend from Contender sailing, and we also had Jimmy aka Skinny) aboard, who is a friend from my skiffing days. Jimmy still races his 12 foot skiff and Mark is a very good Contender sailor/racer. So I was pretty happy to throw the tiller at the other boys and just tinker with the boat and enjoy, while the other two told me what to trim to make them happy.

We had a really good sail.

The 'new' carbon mast was exceptionally good and we put her through her paces by putting up our big black kite and our fractional in breeze approaching mid teens at times, great pressure for testing her out.
Charlene seems smoother and happier to windward now with her new bow shape, she was happy to try to go through small chop rather than pounding over it.

There was a bit of a scare well into our 10 odd nautical mile windward leg of our race. The keel started pounding fore and aft with the choppy waves. At the time I didn't know if the lead bulb was trying to work itself loose or whether the new weight had coursed the nylon shims to show themselves as not being tight enough in the keel case and was allowing the movement. Thankfully it has turned out to be the latter and I have screwed in new thicker nylon sliders.

 Donna must have been at the cabin entrance.

Notice the big creases in the sail?-Bad!

Notice hope much mast we're Not using?- Bad!

 Fractional kite looking pretty crap, not sure what was going on there, I think we might have just set it and are still getting ourselves sorted. It's not the greatest kite anyway.

 

 

The kite looks much better in this shot. That's a 7m sportsboat with the blue kite, nice guys and a very quick boat; and no we didn't come close to beating it.

The main sail was re-cut in the luff to suit the new mast. But it just wasn't happy and looked like crap, and it also behaved like crap. It was very average at best on the old mast, the sail hinges at the 1/3 length battens. With the new mast the hinging is just shocking. I have somehow also managed to make the new mast about 100mm (4inch) taller than the old mast so that also makes the sail look even worse. The main is now at least 200mm short of a full hoist.

The guys enjoyed themselves and Mark is coming back to sail with us for the rest of the season. Which is great because we have ordered/committed to a brand spanking new main sail. Hopefully we will have it before the end of the winter series. Because we were pretty quick with the kite up but we got absolutely, and understandably, left behind on the windward leg.

Splashed again

Finally we got Charlene back in the water yesterday after all her trouble. Her new mast was all rigged and looking great, it's so light and easy to rig her now. She was also sitting on her lines nicely with her new bow finished and her extra lead on the bulb of the keel.
We had to have the main sail re-cut to suit the much straighter new mast and also needed to have the bolt rope reduced from 7mm to 6mm so we could hoist the sail up the new slimmer sail track on the carbon mast.

Yesterday we put her in the water in preparation for todays' two winter series races. I had spent many, many hours during the week getting the mast and sails ready for the weekend, as did Donna. Donna was running around getting the parts I needed from all over town.
Unfortunately one of the most important things was over looked. I hadn't check the outboard engine since we broke our old mast a few months ago. Not unexpectedly, the motor would not run and on closer inspection at home it became very obvious that the engine had swallowed some salt water and the carburetor had seized up. We are now up for a expensive fix.

Next weekend is the next two races in the winter series so we are again battling against time to get Charlene ready for those races.

Mast stepped and ready to race.

I have a little bit more to do, like get the top spreaders on, but the mast is up and tuned and all necessary fittings are on ready to sail again.

We have our first post-breakage race this Sunday coming so its all happening just now.

We wont be running our big black kite this weekend I don't think but otherwise we're good to go. I am even fitting a pivoting ratchet block/ cleat on the cockpit floor to make one-up sailing, down the track, a bit easier and have made wire D1's which were just a bit of spectra rope before.

 

Bullet proof mast base

Donna picked up our new mast base on Friday from the engineers. It is super strong and over-built which is exactly what I wanted.

To get what I wanted I constructed a foam core and plastic mock-up of what I wanted and the dimensions I wanted so there wouldn't be any confusion for the engineers and its paid off because they did a great job of building what I asked for.

I have also strengthened the bottom of the mast where it slots into the new mast base and I've also put the spreaders in their approximate position.

Carbon mast progress.

Well it only took 10 weeks but the insurance company finally paid out about 50% of the cost of a new mast. Luckily we'd already sourced a mast, but the insurance money will go toward re-cutting the main sail and other bits and pieces that are sure to arise.

I did a little painting today and even got some on the parts after tipping over a fresh pot of 2 pac and running out of thinners so I couldn't clean the gun or my hands afterward (the gun was on its last legs so I threw it out happily).

Mast, boom, and spreader all painted (all carbon so just trying to keep the UV off). Now I'm just waiting on a mast base to be build from stainless (it's meant to be ready Friday, after a three week wait).

Flipped...again !

Saturday Charlene was flipped and lifted back on to her trailer again thanks to my friends; Chris, Mark, Crofty, Gary and Chucky. We had a quick attempt to shift the hull with four people and it didn't last long. So thanks again you were all definitely needed.

You can see the lovely new painted bulb sitting under the hull, it wasn't bolted up yet in this photo.

Today I had the unenviable job of putting the keel back in its case and bolting the bulb back on; what a pain in the rear that job was but after two hours of bars, car jacks and fiddling I got it sorted.

After I had finished with the keel I put some light coloured paint on the deck because the turquoise was very hot in the middle of summer.

Next is more light coloured paint in the cockpit and start sanding the clear coat off the carbon mast so we can start strengthening areas and when it's all ready to go on the hull it will be painted with 2pac (colour to be determined) to keep the UV at bay.