Mast break

I was sailing in a new spot - Lake Sammamish Washington to check the boat out before heading to Salt Spring island, Canada for the FFI race.  Just after pulling the boat from lake I headed to a washdown facility.  It was occupied by several boats. I was going to pass but then decided to back up and get in line. fI did not see the low hanging branch and snapped the mast right at the spreaders. 

 

Practice piece.

Trued up edges.  Alum 5042 is fairly brittle.

This beef cake board was free for the taking down the street.

Routed a groove in it for forming in a press.

So the idea here is to create a sleeve and couple mast with rivets.  But also pretreat the sleeve and mast interior with etch.  Quickly rinse, dry and apply epoxy.  Insert sleeve and start riveting.

After that is good enough install second mast section and do an alignment.  

Spot holes and disassemble.  Predrill transfer holes marks. Etch sleeve and mast again, rinse, dry, apply epoxy.

Couple mast and rivet complete.

Etch outer and rinse, dry.  Apply section of fiberglass to perimeter and vac bag if possible.

All lines must be managed prior to connection for future routing.  OK, here goes!! 

Prep a hole pattern and reposition spreader to adjusted height after cutout. 

Transfer holes on mast to sleeve insert

 

 Bonzolite Aluminum - um - solder?  Seemed to flow ok.  It appeared to be taking up some in the seem.
It did not take a huge amount of force to pop this off.  Switch to JB weld.

Moving on to Seattle from Santa Barbara.

Time marches on and I have to pull up stakes.  Leaving Santa Barbara after 7 years with great sailing and great wet Wednesday races.  It will be sad to leave this beautiful spot.

But new waters in the Seattle region should be great.  Now there is a chance to sail with other flying fifteens.  We drove up the I-5 through Shasta just in time for some serious weather.  The day before we came through Eugene an ice storm blanketed the area.  Look closely at that fence!  So much to do but got to get ready for the Spring sailing. 

From the Santa Barbara Yacht club         

On the road north near Gaviota

Cars stopped for hours in the southern Oregon. 

Ice storm hit on bridge

Braving the cold.

Look at the chain links covered in ice.

She gets a bath soon.  

Bailer

It was with great hesitation that I would ever put holes through the hull but I have epoxied in place some 1.5" brass rings that are threaded internally.  Through that I am trying some different designs.  The first is a siphon nozzle.  The valve was extracted from a garden water faucet soldered to another brass threaded mount that fits the hull ring.  So far it works unless I forget to put them in before launch.  When they run it sounds like an espresso machine screaming away.  

Dual Spinnaker Poles for Flying Fifteen

 The 2022 race season is approaching.  I need to get some upgrades to up my chances this year.  The dual pole spinnaker launcher device is what I am aiming for and I bought two carbon fiber 1.25" tubes from Utah.  But they are going to come in late so lets rig something up to see how this will work.

The North American FF association head, Tim O'Connell sent me plenty of info on the application on his fifteen so that will be the starting point.

Utah Tubes

Aft pole ends turned in Delrin

We will develop this part to sit on current ring but able to be removed if all goes south.