Spars and... Spripes? Whatever, I'm tired.

So, I have totally broken my promise to not work on the boat when it's sub-freezing. But I took a lot of other people with me at least.

This week saw 3 days of at least partial 88 work!

Brian Shaw came out to help move the mast and specced out his control layout on the boom. I can't wait to finished this thing up, as it's going to work really well I think.

We talked it through and arrived at the below arrangement for mainsheet gross and fine tune. For some reason, it flipped the image, but up is forward. The little Harken headknocker is for the internal fine tune, and the big one is a Ratchamatic with a cam. The upside of this arrangment: both sheets are close at hand, the fine tune can be dumped at the same time as the gross tune by pulling "in"

This mounting requires some serious rigging gymnastics to make it all work, including a trick system for the routing the fine tune inside the boom (complete) and some small riser blocks for the ratchamatic (in process)

Heres how our gross mainsheet will make it into the boom. It took some fiddling (ha) to make this work, but it seems like a good arrangment, and it actually lets you get the mainsheet blocks closer together than the standard setup. Making this work requires another exit block in the boom, which is not a big deal. Cutting exits is actually one of my favorite rigging tasks. No idea why, as it used to scare the hell out of me. My method is simple, and pretty standard I think.

-mark shape of exit block
-drill hole at either end of cutout shape, using punch/smallbit/full size bit. The holes should be offset so that you're ~1/16" inside the edge of the cutout shape.
-cut out shape with jigsaw and NEW metal blade. Use lots of oil to keep things easy. I always aim to cut out a hole a bit smaller than the finished opening. This means you're final shaping is done with files. This is slower than the jigsaw, but lets you get the shape perfect, and gives you a little margin with the jigsaw. I've got about 5 files I use to make these shapes. Make sure your corners are rounded, as sharp corners form weak spots where stress builds up and thats where cracks are likely to occur.
I worked on our boom in between some other projects, and am about 1/3 of the way through it all.
Time on boom in shop
Kristian 3 hrs


Niki and I went down to the boatshed today. Kevin was prepping varnish with the heat on, so it seemed like a good time to be there. We had a short little list of tasks, mostly around moving the halyards and small parts from the old mast to the new. I'm going to miss that old mast, it was great in big breeze as the middle was real stiff, with a soft top section. Oddly, it seemed to stiffen up as the season went on, although that could be due to our rotting mast step.

The old mast was a bit ragged. The mast base had been repaired once, with a big welded chunk on it. And the back edge of the mast was starting to deform a bit, probably from the angle our step made with the base.
We also moved the halyards over to the new mast. The mast still needs the following:
install masthead unit
install gooseneck plate
cut exit for spin halyard
install topping lift exit block
cut topping lift exit
install spreader brackets and spreaders
install standing rigging
install themed compass mount

Kristian 2hrs
Niki 2hrs