Archive for March, 2011

A New Look for 2011

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Now that the hour has gone forward and the evenings are longer, progress in the boatyard has accelerated. Two weeks to go before launching. The long hours spent working on Dinah over the winter are starting to pay dividends as her new look takes shape. Yesterday we got the first impression of what the new “branding” will look like. Obviously we’ll have to wait until she’s in the water before passing final judgement, but so far I’m pleased with Dinah’s new look for 2011…

http://www.dinah.sail.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/logo2.jpg

http://www.dinah.sail.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/logo.jpg

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Smooth as a…

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Over the winter we’ve been working hard to improve the underwater profile of Dinah. After removing all traces of old antifoul (many coats!), the entire bottom was sanded and faired to a perfectly smooth surface. The new bottom rudder bearing fitted last year was never perfectly fair. As you will see in the picture below, it’s been painstakingly finished to the extent that it now looks like it was part of the original mould. The weed cutter/deflector has also been embedded into the hull to make it as fair as physically possible.

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The old thru-hull fittings were swapped out for new flush fittings. In the picture below you can see one of the fittings in the closed position. You nearly need to look twice to see the small circular gap around the plug which is part of the integrated seacock.

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The old speedo and depth transducers were replaced with a new flush triducer which again is set into the hull so as to be perfectly fair. Below you can see the flush fit triducer on the right, and again the circular rings marking two thru-hull fittings leading to and from the head in the bow.

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The end result is very satisfying and will hopefully provide a small boost to boatspeed. Even the tiniest increase in average speed could have a significant impact on performance, especially in a longer event such as the Fastnet Race in August.


Bob’s been busy…

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Over the last few weeks Dinah’s Uncle Bob has been busy fitting the new flush thru-hull fittings. As usual he has carefully documented the process and a step by step guide to installing ForeSpar Flowtech Marelon Thru-Hull Valves is now available on his website www.sail.ie which is always worth checking for interesting content.
The finished product looks superb. Exactly as planned… perfectly smooth, completely flush thru-hulls in place of the cumbersome rusted old original skin fittings. I’ll post some pics of the various other changes made to the underwater profile in a few days.


Barbers

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

A few members of the JOD community have commented on the fact that we use barbers on Dinah to restore the most efficient shape after changing to the non-overlapping jibs. The system we came up with seems to work well, was relatively cheap, and didn’t need any new holes in the boat for fittings.

Back in the cockpit we use the upper jib sheet lead block for the barber control. The cleat built in to the block holds the load no problem. The barber is made long enough so that it can be led to the weather winch, allowing the barber to be adjusted easily even when the sheet is fully loaded. In the pic below you can see the green barber control line in its block. The whipping on the line marks the most common barber positions.

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Further forward, we lashed a turning block to the front of the jib car track. The barber leads forward just above the jib car adjuster, and turns through the block, up to the base of the mast. At the base of the mast we shackled a block and beckett. The green barber line goes from that block to a ring and back to the beckett. The jib sheet leads through the ring, so the barber line pulls the ring (and thereby the sheet load) inboard as more pressure is put on the barber.

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It’s simple, cheap, quick to install… and I find it makes a massive difference upwind.