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 Team Blog
Sunday 20th April Bob is instructing on a course, but will be back after 20:00 to work on the lam’ing of the various internal dagger board casings, bulk and bunk heads etc. David and myself started working on the outer, top joint.
We also:
Saturday 19th April – Hatching of the 2nd mould Mould lowered to the floor and unbolted in preparation of the ‘hatching of the 2nd hull. For those of you who have been following this blog, firstly thanks for taking he time and secondly you will recall the unbelievable two days it took to hatch the 1st hull out of the mould, due to hang-ups on the mould and the violence it took to release it..!! Fingers crossed this one is kinder to us…!!! To help we have the ever present skipper Bob, Chris, David and myself. Chris came along with is video camera to document the hatch.. Yeeeehaaaarrrggghhhh…. It is official, the 2nd hull has been born and we are in the presence of a 30 foot Dazcat (once it has grown up, that is). The hatching of the 2nd hull went very easily. The first half mould came off with simple wedges to prize them apart and it then just fell off. The second half was a little tighter. Again the use of wedges broke the mould seal. We then poured water into the mould i.e. between the mould and the outer surface of the hull and within 30 mins the mould gave up its grip and the hull was ‘floated out’. The hull was carried (by 2 people) and proudly introduced to its sister! Both mould were cleaned up and moved outside, in preparation of being returned to Multimarine and to make space for the ongoing build. In the afternoon, Darren Newton the MD of Multimarine - www.multimarine.co.uk came down to visit the build, see what his moulds had once again shaped and to cast his knowledgable eyes over the 2 x hulls and drawings. Bob and the team had a good discussion with Darren and a good few ideas where muted and considered. Darren kindly offered further assistance to the build and has very generous donated 2 x hatches and offered to make up the cockpit seats. I have been ‘dreaming’ of leather, with very thick comfy and insulated padding as it will assist ‘Nobby Stiles’ through the cold climes! Friday 18th April - ATF goes International - David Llobera Rodriguez joins the team.
David is from the town of Palma in Majorca, Spain. David has sailed with Bob before and has also been a student with Bob’s Performance Yachting sailing school. He is in the UK attending various sailing course with Performance Yachts and other sailing schools in the Plymouth area and is hoping to gain his Yachtmaster Ocean qualification in the very near future. David is also intending to crew with Bob on one of the ‘warmer legs’ during the circumnavigation of the North America. David says that the legs passing California or going through the Panama canal or passing the ‘Windies’ has his name on it!!
Simon ‘Biffa’ Baker has came up trumps. As discussed at his earlier visit, Simon located the 2x dagger boards and 2 x rudders and Bob collected them from Multimarine’s workshops in Millbrook, Cornwall. This is a huge step forward and has taken a week or even two off the build time. This is once again a very generous gesture of Simon and Darren of Multimarine Composites Ltd. Their support is gratefully received and not taken for granted that is for sure. Top notch company, run by top notch blokes with top notch staff…. what more can one ask for! Monday 14th April – Sunday 20th April Inner bottom joint core was very successful with no lifted or high points on the Airex. Bob, Darren along with Chris Nail continued during the week with…
Sunday 13th April Bob is back from his break with his family. We got stuck into laying the core of the bottom joint, peel plied, bread and bleed clothed it and most gratifyingly got ‘first time - no hiss’ vacbag placed. Left over night to cure. Week Monday 7th April – Sunday 13th April The build slowed down this week due to a serious shortage of volunteer boat builders!! Aiden was able to help in the evening of Mon and Tue but had to leave to attend a hospital appointment. Managed to lam the bottom inner joint, and undertake a fair amount of preparing and cutting of the inner joint lam and core materials etc. Sunday 6th April
AM - Painted the inner surfaces of both halves of the 2nd hull and pre-placed the tacky tape to make things easier before joining the two moulds PM – Ian Lyden and his son William arrived o assist with the shifting, lifting and joining of the two mould of the 2nd hull. It all went very very successfull. With the 2nd hull now complete and ready for lam’ing of inner joints Friday 4th April
Undertook a total clean up and reorganisation of the workshop. Also Bob leaves to depart on a pre-arranged family holiday for a week.
Week 31st March – 6th April
During the evenings of the week, at various times we had the additional help of Aiden Pinder and Phill Russell. During this time we…
Inner lam’ed both half cores. Nikki came down to visit the build and take some up to date photographs. Week starting 5th April Bob is on a rare family Holiday this week, lets hope him and Carole and the kids have a well earned rest.5th April 2008 The second hull takes shape
22nd March- Repairs and Preparation for 2nd All day repairing and preparing the two moulds for the build of the second hull. When the first hull was born, there were a couple of ‘hang ups’ this had caused a small amount of damage to the moulds face. The repair is very easy but time consuming. It involved cutting back the damaged area and then infilling the patch with Gelcoat repair compound. Wet and drying this back to smooth and then re-polishing both of the moulds with an electric buffer to a high gloss finish. Once this was finished we reapplied around 6+ layers of Frekote and to once again re-applied the 50mm Flashband (to create a 3-4mm rebate for joining) strip around the moulds leading edge. Moulds are now ready for the 2nd hull to be constructed. De ja vu begins!!!
18th March – A very longer labour ensues! The rest of the day was spent tidying the workstation up, preparing the 1st hull for the external joining processes and trying to assess why one half came out easily and the other being an absolute nightmare! The couple of theories held are that possibility before the first lamination had begun that Acetone had been introduced to the mould via a contaminated cloth, ungloved hands had been placed directly on to the mould or finally when we conducted the first lamination that moving a wrongly placed glass fibre sheet during the process had introduced/ caused a Frekote disturbance and this caused an area susceptible to hang-ups! We will never 100% know the answer, but the consensus of opinion being that we wet-out just a head of laying up the glass and more stringent caution required on the second hull Frekote preparation etc.
17th March – The 1st hull is to be born Yeeehaaa, The first hull interior joined and ready for the ‘final assault’ of breaking it out of the mould. Crew armed and dangerous with wedges, mallets and unbreakable will power. Hope the hull does not quite have the same ‘attitude’ and obligingly gives up its vice like grip (thanks to Frekote) and comes out one piece? This was successfully achieved with no loss of fingers or toes and the team had created Bob's replica of a WW2 submarine (we always new there was a ulterior motive). With the halves not bolted together the next process was to make the internal joining of the halves. First was the bottom section and it was a case of glassing the joint across, then applying 100mm strips of Kevlar, then over glass this with a 200mm strip of glass. This was then vacbagged. Ready to receive the Airex Core strips to fill the void and vacbagged again for the perfect finish. Danny and Aiden had joined the team to continue with the build. All was plain sailing until disaster struck with the vacbag of the Airex Core. All went fine over the weekend, with the preparation, 1st Lam and Core Lam. All the process went well with the core lam being vacbagged on the Sunday night for an over night cure. However we came into the workshop on Monday to find that the Core lam had not cured and was still soft as when applied. So what do you do when face with this type of disaster? Bob in true form made the correct decision and put the kettle on! Lots of head scratching and quantum theories around the effects of temperature ensued. After deep thought I had that stomach churning yureca moment. I was in charge of mixing the epoxy and yes… I had forgotten to put hardener in the epoxy mix ( I am blaming Bobs nocturnal workings!) After another cup of tea and about of silence, we resigned ourselves to the inevitable of having to undo the good work of the Core Lam, pull all the Airex out and scrap out all of the soft resin by hand. I not sure if it was telekinetics, team telepathy, or just Bob, Aiden and Dannys eyes but somehow I knew that I was the ideal man for this dirty job. This was a big set back, on the basis that the whole of this old resin had to be totally removed and manually cleaned out using scrappers, clothes, brushes and Acetone. The end result of this, plus work commitments mid week meant that all our fine work in getting ahead of the programme, had been lost and in fact we were now nearly a week behind! No use crying, crack on as they say!!!
8-9th March 2008 With both quarters of the 1st hull now completed, some thought was now given on how best to install the bunks, bulkheads and compartments. Bob wanted to do as much as possible in advance before the two halves were mated together. This would make the process of fitting out considerably easier.
It was decided to install/ glass a bow ring bulkhead that would receive the main bulkhead later in the build. It also enables us to make, glass and vacbag these and introduce them via the open bow section at a later stage once the halves have been mated. This gave the huge advantage of being able to install the bulkhead and bunk platforms etc though the open bow section and giving us more working space for the joining etc.
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Nikki Woodroffe (Team co-ordinator and website administrator) came down to the workshop to get updates and to take some more photographs of the 2 x hulls etc. The crew ‘rocking’ with the new rudders whilst the skipper is away. We finished at 19.30 and dropped David over to Plymouth Sailing Centre in Mountbatten (via an Indian takeaway) in readiness for his course start on Monday .
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