BIA (back in action)
It's two o'clock and the wind is just beginning to trickle in. We have spent the morning putting everything back together. We found a little more damage but overall it is minor. The COMPOTECH strut had some minor damage but I replace it with the spare one anyway. Thankfully they sent us one after our last little misadventure.
The tears in the clear wing film have all been repaired and the wing has been shrunk down with the heat-gun. The brackets for the wing angle sensors have been bent back into shape and a few other little jobs have been ticked off.
I went over the beam with a fine-tooth comb and still couldn't find anyt external signs of damage. As mentioned, we sat over 300kg of weight on it mid-span yesterday and it handled it. Now I'm not about to cut it open to look for anything...but I may regret it. I'll discuss it further with Malcolm.
The wind is light now. I'm sure it will build but it will be by the time the tide has left us as it is already on the ebb.
The 'Goo' is still curing on the end of the new strut but it will be ready in half an hour. The wing is on Sailrocket.
If we can go we will.
The bastard wing. It's a love/hate thing for me. It's like living with a Grizzly bear that you raised from birth... but never trained that well. It grew into a big, beautiful and wonderous thing but if it gets it into it's head to tear down your living room wall... then all you can do is stand back and watch. Going out in 20 knot plus is like giving the bear some 'speed'.
I love the wings shape. It will give it great power and efficiency once it is pointed in the right direction. I'm blown away by it's ability to survive big wipeouts... but then those wipeouts come from its bad manners. I'd rather a more fragile beast that doesn't wipeout. A grizzly crossed with a cocker spaniel or something!
Anyway... I'm wondering here... the fact is that we are ready to roll once more.
Yesterday as it was all coming undone I thought we were screwed for this 'Round-2' journey to Namibia and that we would spend our last days repairing Sailrocket once more.
I'm pretty happy.
So I think I have my head around what happened yesterday. We just got all out of sync. with each other. The boat needs to be semi-free to feather itself to the wind and a few factors were interfering with this whilst my attention was elsewhere. I didn't think it would actually go into a non-recoverable tack... but it did... so we must pay more attention.
Cheers, Paul.
The tears in the clear wing film have all been repaired and the wing has been shrunk down with the heat-gun. The brackets for the wing angle sensors have been bent back into shape and a few other little jobs have been ticked off.
I went over the beam with a fine-tooth comb and still couldn't find anyt external signs of damage. As mentioned, we sat over 300kg of weight on it mid-span yesterday and it handled it. Now I'm not about to cut it open to look for anything...but I may regret it. I'll discuss it further with Malcolm.
The wind is light now. I'm sure it will build but it will be by the time the tide has left us as it is already on the ebb.
The 'Goo' is still curing on the end of the new strut but it will be ready in half an hour. The wing is on Sailrocket.
If we can go we will.
The bastard wing. It's a love/hate thing for me. It's like living with a Grizzly bear that you raised from birth... but never trained that well. It grew into a big, beautiful and wonderous thing but if it gets it into it's head to tear down your living room wall... then all you can do is stand back and watch. Going out in 20 knot plus is like giving the bear some 'speed'.
I love the wings shape. It will give it great power and efficiency once it is pointed in the right direction. I'm blown away by it's ability to survive big wipeouts... but then those wipeouts come from its bad manners. I'd rather a more fragile beast that doesn't wipeout. A grizzly crossed with a cocker spaniel or something!
Anyway... I'm wondering here... the fact is that we are ready to roll once more.
Yesterday as it was all coming undone I thought we were screwed for this 'Round-2' journey to Namibia and that we would spend our last days repairing Sailrocket once more.
I'm pretty happy.
So I think I have my head around what happened yesterday. We just got all out of sync. with each other. The boat needs to be semi-free to feather itself to the wind and a few factors were interfering with this whilst my attention was elsewhere. I didn't think it would actually go into a non-recoverable tack... but it did... so we must pay more attention.
Cheers, Paul.
posted by Paul at 1:29 pm
3 Comments:
please post videos. Good luck guys and girls
Will do, the last couple of runs haven't been that spectacular. Hopefully the next couple will be... one way or the other.
Cheers, Paul
I dont know...video from the other day, while painful, would have been pretty interesting to watch.
Best of luck to you and your team.
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