Fit out has begun..

Started to fit out the boat over the last couple of days with the help of the old man. Once our fittings arrived from ronstan we double check the dimensions of each fitting and its location and made a bolts list for each fitting. This resulted in several different lengths of M4 or M5 (metric) bolts being used over the whole boat in order to 1. keep weight to a minimum, 2. prevent bolts protruding into the spinnakers chute/bow pole area etc.

The bolts used were 304 grade stainless as our local store did not supply 316 grade, without ordering them in boxes of 100. So this just means that good care of the boat is needed to ensure that salt water is washed off when ever possible to minimise corrosion... on the plus side 304 is stronger than 316 grade and slightly cheaper. All up our bolt order for the bolt cost approx $100, which included several shackles and a 50 x 6mm tow ring.

All fittings on the floor and side tanks are attached to be boat by taping threads into pre-located fibreglass or carbon fibre "blocks" laminated into the floor.

The mast step is made from 2mm thick 6061-T6 aluminium, which i tig welded in the workshop at uni. The side stay and lowers mounting bracket is made from 2mm 304 stainless steel, which i also made in the workshop.



The overall rig length is 6.49m with a goose neck height of 640mm above the sheer (1000mm off the floor). I will upload a "plan/drawing" of the finalised rig once it is completed.



We roughly placed the rig into the boat this afternoon to try and estimate the stay lengths required. To do this we set the rake on the mast so that the tip was vertically above the back of the centreboard case (or equivalent distance in our case) as is a generally rule of thumb for cherub rigging. From here lengths were taken as were additional measurements of all rig fitting locations so that i can create a spreadsheet to calculation stay lengths and the effects of rake change/mast step position on length etc.

After the initial rigging today it looks like I'm going to have some "fun" trying the make the sail plan work for the boat. The jib requires a very long foot due to the mast position (6ft from the bow, as opposed to 5'6-8" or so for normal boats). I anticipated this and placed a large forestay mount on the boat allowing it to come back about 120mm, so I'll let you know what i can come up with.