Lucie’s Back in the Water

Bottom paint – in one of the previous posts we had shown a picture of LUCIE’s bottom without bottom paint, we later applied three coats of Baltoplate – a hard, vinyl based racing bottom paint, which then got hand polished until it was ultra smooth and slick. This product is not very good as an antifouling and needs regular washing but for a boat like LUCIE which is basically dry-sailed this will work fine.

Mast – We obviously finished the repair to the cap shroud attachment, the dog-bones for the running backstays got spliced on by the folks at rig-pro and can’t get lost. At that time with a 1 1/4″ hole in the mast we were able to inspect the mast on the inside and found one of the halyards (spinnaker) running incorrectly fore and aft of the thru bolts – and corrected this. We also replaced the bottom piece of sail track after that had ripped out of the mast in Flensburg and eventually broke. We used a different and way more ridged fastening schedule to keep this new piece of track in place. Furthermore we now changed the fasteners on all of the halyard exit boxes after the jib halyard exit box below deck had ripped out in Flensburg (nice catch Matt). These boxes should now all be very secure.

On the boom we replaced the previous outhaul system with bronze blocks and also changed the rigging of it. We went from four sheaves to three sheaves but kept the same purchase by using a cascade system. We also added a small block at the end of the boom to ease the outhaul – previously the line was running at a 150 deg angle thru a bronze eye only which obviously introduced a lot of chafe. So the whole outhaul system now will work significantly easier.

Spinnaker bag – the spinnaker bag opening and closing mechanism got improved: the bag closes on both sides back into the outside with the pull of one line and opens via a bungee retractor system upon uncleating the closing line. For hoist and douse there is a small loop on the floor boards which is stiffened with some poly tube to allow single hand cleating of the bag. I am sure this will finally make Axel happy.

Jib cunningham – the general rigging for the jib cunningham has not been changed but the starboard adjuster line has now been located further aft so that Axel has access to it when sitting on the bridge between the cockpits. He had requested a Ronstan Swivel base with a Harken cam cleat – and we “cobbled” that together for him.

Spinnaker tweekers and sheet guides – all lead rings above deck have been replaced with brass rings, spliced onto the tweeker lines – looks very nice. The tweeker cam cleats below deck have now been fastened into very solid oak backing blocks – they were previously only fastened into the spruce carlin and were always at risk of ripping out.

Main sheet bridle – This system had caused some problems during the last regatta. The bridle would not come down upon release, there was too much friction in the system. In the fall we had already decided to go from an 8:1 to a 4:1 purchase to take friction out, we further decided to replace the sheaves which were leading the bridle adjuster thru the deck. The load on this bridle is very high and both the first generation thru deck ferrules and the second generation sheaves got pulled thru the deck towards center line. In a “last minute decision” we then changed the attachment point on deck as we realized that the intended pad eyes for holding the bridle would be under enormous side load and would eventually break with potentially catastrophic consequences (loosing runners and main sheet at the same time!). We then designed a new pad eye which separates the runner and the bridle and had that one completely thru bolted to the shear clamp with a G10 backing plate. The new pad eye is actually two pad eyes on one base plate with each of the eyes going in accordance with the load vector.

And then there was more painting and varnishing of boat, bits & bops – the usual “spring cleaning”. Stay tuned for some updates from our spring training in Newport…

Jens