Thursday, July 28, 2016

Time off the Water...

reattaching batten plates on our practice sail
Another major component of sailing and racing the 49erFX is fixing the 49erFX. We are lucky, our boat here on the west coast is a solid one and we have had very few "fix it" days (knock on wood), but we still have ours. Today we had a solid off the water day in the boat yard patching, filling, drilling, and Dremeling. We were both pre-disposed to arts and crafts as children, and we consider this an extension of that early passion. Our projects for the day: patching and reenforcing the luff of the main where the bolt rope had started to rip through, drilling some nicer holes in the wing for our control lines to run through, and making a set of tiller extensions. Thank you to Quantum Sails in Richmond for your expert help with project number one, and thank you to Whale Point Hardware for having an unusually complete selection of West Systems Epoxy; it was just the thing for project number two.

Paging Doctor Boat-Work....
We estimate that for every four hours of sailing we put in an hour of boat-work, and when we compare the two our boat-work learning curve about matches our sailing learning curve. At this point we have the skills to fix almost anything that we can break, and that gives us the confidence to really send it on the water. We can also make the additions and modifications necessary to have a fast and competitive boat, which is a big part of racing in this fleet. From splicing all of our own sheets and control lines to patching our sails to doing fiberglass and carbon repairs we'd say we have come pretty far from our square-knot tying opti days. We still have a ton to learn, off the water and on, but today was good proof of progress for us.

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