Deck Reenforcement

I love Sailing Anarchy. If it wasn't for that site I would never have attempted this project, but SA is a place you can go and get answers for ANY question. This time it was the deck. I didn't want to leave the deck as just 1/8 ply, it just wouldn't have stood up to abuse. So a quick question on SA gave me the answer. The deck now has a layer of carbon and kevlar underneath which should make the deck quite strong while adding minimal weight. By the recommendations of SA, the kevlar runs the length of the boat and the carbon runs the width. Is the boat now bulletproof? probably not, but I'm at least not going to put my knee through it.

I also got the mast bases turned last week. They look good, but I think that material I got (2" dia delrin) was about 1/8" too small in diameter. I don't like the amount of lip I have holding the base of the mast. The last thing I want is to get it base jammed into the mast and end up cracking it. I'll probably get some more material and turn some new ones in the spring, but at the moment this will work.

Proof of Life!

It lives! (or at least the parts can be assembled)

Mast Attachments

There are things sticking to the mast. Yay! If I'm in the mood I may try and get the mast up this weekend to start looking at everything and take some pictures. The test spreaders are constructed (amazing what you can do with a jig saw in an hour). This thing is really starting to look like a boat. Now if I only had foils....

Current Build Status

Ok, so after my long delay in progress I'm getting working again and things are moving right along. I'm actually pretty surprised at how fast things are going at the moment, but with the hull and racks mostly completed, much of the rest is the small detail work which is fairly easy In the last week I have in installed the compression struts to the mast post and am currently working on the rigging. The components of the rig are as follows:

• Mast Base
• Boom
• Spreaders
• Shrouds

Having completely blank tubes from which to build all of this stuff has given me a lot of freedom about how to put it all together. Lets start with the mast base. This part is pretty easy. Its two chunks of delrin that are cut to fit in the mast post and the bottom of the mast with a cut-off bolt head to act as a pin. The hardest part about this was finding the delrin, which I ended up getting off of E-bay. I will have the delrin lathed to fit the two end.

Boom - pretty easy really. Just cut the end of the boom to fit around the mast and then attach it with a bolt. I also have the hardware pieces for the vang and outhaul on order.

Spreaders - I spent some time with some scale drawings trying to figure out the perfect geometry for the spreaders. I think I'm pretty close, but I'm going to build a set of test spreaders that will have a variable geometry so that I can test them a bit before I build the real set.

The mast attachments will be made of solid carbon and are pretty close to being ready to put on the mast. Once these few things are done I should be ready to put the rig up and start testing it out. Once I get everything how I like it there will be some finish work to do, but I have all winter to do that.

Progress, OMG!

Wow, has it been a year since I've posted? I guess it has. After dealing with a bunch of happy horse $hit over the last year, work on Mothball one has resumed. I'd almost forgotten where I was, but now that I'm going again I remember how much fun this project really is. Hopefully over the next month or so I'll get a lot of stuff done and have the boat ready to go in the spring. More updates to come soon.