11 July 2010

Not Much Done

Saturday morning started off with the best of intentions. Nico and us hit the road early enough… Well tried to anyway; my car wouldn’t start. No surprise really it hasn’t been used for three days and the nights were cold, not a good combination for a diesel engine. So with a quick change of car we were off.

First stop Onehunga to the Powertool centre to see if they sold drill stands. No luck there, so on to Carbine Rd in Mt Wellington where there is a secondhand tool shop. “Let me see, I saw one recently on the floor, nope its gone”. Just my luck.

So on to NZ Fiberglass to get more glue powder. On the way there is another second hand tool shop so I quickly stop into that one. Still no drill stand but I did get a nice second hand Stanley plane.

On to NZ Fiberglass and my luck is holding; they are closed! Well that limits my options for the weekend. I went to Mums’ picked up her jumper leads, got my car started and with the whole family went to Spotlight in Manukau. After spotlight we went to Bunnings and I bit the bullet and purchased myself a drill press. I also got a round bastard file which I’ll use to shape the cut-outs for the storage hatches.

The rest of the day was spent planing the gunwales flat and sanding back the splotches of epoxy.

Sunday I assembled two saw horses I purchased a couple of weeks ago and swept out the garage. I fitted the rear bulkhead hatch cover and marked out where the calculated Center of Effort is.

What’s that you ask? Good question; the Center of Effort is the geometric center of the sail, its where the main driving force of the sail is concentrated. The push of the wind forces boat to turn into the wind. To prevent that sail boats have a keel or centerboard. On the Ulua the centerboard is mounted on the side of the hull and is called a leeboard. As a rule of thumb, the leeboard needs to be mounted 5% of the hulls water length behind the center of effort. With a canoe it is also important to make sure that this is at the widest point in the hull. To complicate matters, because the hull is long and narrow, crew position will have a big impact on the real waterline so in practice we’ll be able to balance the helm with our seating position.

At the end of week twenty two this is what she looks like:

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