Finally I am in the final stages of rigging the boat. With any luck at all I will be in the water by Sunday, August 19, 2007. It's taken much longer than I had hoped but still pretty fast considering the complexities of a trimaran - let's hope those complexities turn into sea worthiness, speed, and comfort!
On August 1 I closed out my shop and trailered the boat home. I really enjoyed having this shop and the people in the other shops around me were really great and provided lots of help and advice. Many thanks to Eric the German, Eric the Pole, and Tim the Carpenter for all the help and assistance they provided - and for the beers we shared.
Of course final rigging is also taking longer than I had hoped. The sail arrived months ago, but I am just now getting around to rigging it for the boat. Each of the three battens requires a set of jaws. These jaws were made from 1/8" by 1" 6061T6 aluminum. This aluminum has to be covered with something to protect the sail cloth and the mast. I purchased some nylon tubing and cut it and burned holes in it as shown below.
The tubing slides over the aluminum strap as follows:
Six of these are required for the 3 battens. The two holes at the top require holes burned into the sails and holes drilled through the battens to connect one side to the other.
Taking a hot soldering gun to an expensive sail isn't a fun way to spend the evening! But it worked out OK and all holes were burned without incident.
The soldering gun has a story behind it. Take heed if you need a soldering gun any time soon. I had a soldering gun for something like three decades, but it recently died after accidental exposure to a few rain storms. I went to Home Depot and bought their "heavy duty" model to replace it, but it would not get hot enough to melt nylon and dacron line like I was used to with my old gun. I took it back and the guy at Home Depot whispered to me that Sears had a 450 watt model.
I went to Sears and they did have a model that went to 450 during heatup and then cut back to 150 watts after the tip reached "operating temp of 900 degrees." I didn't like the sound of that, but they had another "heavy duty" gun that was a 250/150 watt model. Pull the trigger all the way back and you get 250 watts steady. This sounded like it might do the trick with a tip temp of 1100 degrees. The gun you see me abusing the sail with is the 250/150 model from Sears for $32 and it worked great for all burning and melting purposes.
The plan is to finish rigging the sail and the hiking benches on Saturday and then first launch on Sunday weather permitting.
