Tuesday, September 13, 2016

_____________________ USING THE WORKBENCH _____________________

Last season when racing my Starling sailing dinghy I kept wondering why I often was unable to point as high into the wind as the other boats. I thought the reason was because I am a lot heavier than the other skippers.

Recently I checked the Starling Class rules and found that my centreboard is shorter in length and narrower in width than the class dimensions specify. This relative lack of area may explain my lack of pointing ability, although I can't be absolutely sure.

So I am putting my renovated workbench to good use as I add extra area to the centreboard. I have sawn the board in half length ways and are laminating in an extra 2.5cm of timber into the width. I have cut off the shaped bottom of the board and will add an extra 4cm length. These alterations will bring the width and length up to the correct dimensions. The alterations will add roughly 150 square centimetres (24 sq inches) to the centreboards area. Time will tell whether this extra area will make any difference.

So today there was a slight hiatus from Mariners dinghy renovation as I began the first stage of gluing and cramping up the centreboard alterations in the vise. It has been good having a good sturdy workbench to work on.

4 comments:

Ben said...

Again it is clear to me that you can’t do anything on a boat without C clamps !

Alden Smith said...

Yes, they do come in useful!

Tweezerman said...

Yes, Mucho clamps holding lots of bits of wood indicate that we may not always have a solid plan forward for how we are going to get there but we are making progress.

Alden Smith said...

Tweezerman, you have read between the lines and stumbled on the great life metaphor in my post.