As ever, the weather has cycled through various events, some of which were conducive to sailing, others not. However, I have managed four brief sails over the past five weeks.
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| A blustery sail up to Ipswich Docks, where the weather did its worst… |
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| 28th August, white track, 2.8nm; 8th Sept, red track, 4.4nm; 23rd Sept, green track, 8.5nm; 27th Sept, yellow track, 8.5nm. |
In the meantime, I was able to do some repairs to the tender which I picked up in a bit of a hurry early this season, and which spends its year at the boatyard at Pin Mill. Chief amongst the issues were a damaged keelband and two 'watertight' buoyancy tanks, fore and aft, which were decidedly not watertight! So this was a good opportunity to practise some fibreglass repair work. Herewith, some pictures of the process:
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| Practising calligraphy…(badly!) |
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| The keel area just forward of the rear 'skeg' of the keelband was badly damaged. As per this picture, I was able to grind this back to the original wood and epoxy a number of layers of fibreglass repair tape, which can just be seen in the picture and which seem to be holding up well. |
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| The bit right at the end of the skeg needs some reinforcement and tidying up but it looks basically watertight, despite appearances so can wait till late in the year. |
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| Here's the bow buoyancy chamber. I had to remove and the the reseal the white watertight inspection hatch, using sikaflex. I then dug out the loose and cracked bonding between the bottom edge of the thwart and the inside hull, epoxied a layer of fibreglass repair tape right across the join and then painted the whole section in grey Danboline bilge paint. I could have made much more of this, and tarted-up the whole interior, and indeed the exterior but don't want to get too carried away and make the dinghy to be too attractive to anyone looking to 'borrow' this fine ship for any extended period of time…! |
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| Similar repairs done with the stern chamber. |
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| While I was at it, a few dings and scrapes were mended on the hull, which I decided at this point not to paint again for security reasons. |
