The weather in Auckland between Xmas and New Year can at beat be described as average. High winds and rain, made the prospect of missing time away seems easier to cope with. Boxing day dawned and while most of us were involved with family commitments, Rob and our longtime supporter Charles started the process of scrapping back the antifouling from Coppelia. Once the two days of scrapping were complete, Rob then began a further 3 full days of sanding.
With the hull finally bare, it was relief to find that hull is in great shape and requires no remedial work before it is repainted. The brevity of my description on this job does not fully describe how hard the job of sanding the boat was. I am very grateful that Rob took ownership of this part of the program allowing me to spend some time with Neil and my family.
Next we wanted to find out the condition of our rudder, Rob did this by taking a series of core samples. Sadly it turned out there was water in the rudder, so it was decided to make a new one. A strong rudder is an essential piece of equipment for the Round New Zealand Race. First step to making a new rudder was to remove the stock – the metal bit that joins the tiller (used to steer) to the below water part of the rudder. Removal of the stock was very difficult, as the wooden/plywood rudder body while wet remain very strong. After a morning of levering and cutting the wood, we finally released it.
The verdict … while water had entered the wood along the stainless steel shaft, the rudder remained useable due to the construction method. So we are now in the process of building another one, with a couple of slight modifications to prevent future water damage. Rob had all his original numbers for the profiles of the previous rudder, making the design process easy. I developed an excel spreadsheet to enable us to vary the width of the rudder and the fore and aft length, then calculate the shape. Once calculated I then plotted a series of profiles, which will be made into templates for shaping the rudder.
Sally drafts the new shape profiles
The list for the new few weeks….
- complete repaint of the bottom of the boat
- complete design and build a new rudder
- build and fit storage for additional batteries
- install a new navigation PC, the latest recycled one is having issues
- receive a new #1 genoa
- check all sails and repair the main
- complete our first aid certificates
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