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.

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.

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.

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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 12:56 pm and is filed under General.