As nice as getting a brand new boat is, there is still plenty of work to be done to get it sailable. The uncovering is bitter sweet, as you quickly forget that feeling as you look into the boat and realize all the work that lies ahead to make it not only race ready but Olympic ready.
We’ve now spent the last 2 days rigging the boat non stop! No major projects, just lots of little ones that all take an hour or so each. As much as the boat comes completely rigged, we still have our own systems and preferences. We’ve replaced virtually every line in the boat with our favorite weaves (amsteel, lightning, trophy, and warpspeed) from SAMSON ROPES which took most of the time to get the lengths right. We chose a grey, black, and white cordage scheme to go with the light grey deck and white hull. Looks very intimidating. On top of that we’ve had to add in our own systems with HARKEN hardware, as well as spend a little more time on the little things for the Olympics. Certain examples would be whipping the bungee onto blocks instead of tying them to eliminate the chances of it catching, and also downsizing the line in certain areas such as the jib lead and jib cunningham. We’ve gone as small as 2mm now of super strong spectra from SAMSON. We’ve checked the loads and it makes it easy. We’ll just have to check the wear on them to see if it can handle the Olympics. Hopefully we can keep it on to help minimize water weight in the boat.
Once getting the boat re-rigged and our mast tuned, we headed to Carrefour, about the only western shopping center we’re all familiar with from France. The big attraction is the bike selection. The most expensive being a 2,200 ($315 USD) Yuan electric moped. Nigel and I seriously considered buying electric bikes for a grand total of $220 but settled for normal bikes at $70 in the end. The big plus being the fold up option. I got lucky and scored a fold up bike with nice rear suspension. Already feels like a nicer ride.
So tomorrow will be our first day on the water which should be very interesting. Apart from the usual new boat issues of improper line lengths and numerous other things, we’ll be facing current, fog, algae, and of course the prospect of no wind… Wish us luck on our new splash down!
Original post by Graham and software by Elliott Back
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