I guess a bit of a quick update is in order (and seeing I have 5mins to myself)


A fireball rudder gets the chop and a quick buildup with some chopped mat......
unfortunately the rudder was 20mm at the top where I cut it down to length but the section in the bottom part of the case was only 16mm.... hence the glass buildup ...

it works and will do for now... plan to make a mould and 'cast' my own blades to suit the alloy cases I made for Shy, this will give me setup for Karp aswell.



end result......



ok so its a bit of an odd pair, but under the circumstances it was a quick and easy fix...... and damn cheap too
quick/easy/cheap..... what more could you want

240/29900

Over the xmas break I have a plan....

modify the original rudder, specifically around the stainless part

take a mould of the rudder head from Shy and use the lower part of the blade from Karp

cast my own set of blades, this will be initially done in chopped mat for testing & seeing I've never done this sort of thing before I cant afford to waste it in carbon or Kevlar. I happen to have ~30metres of heavy gsm chopped mat on hand so its "expendable" in comparision to the cost of having to get the carbon or Kevlar cloth

stay tuned

I've got the sail back from Goodalls that got wrecked @ the Warnambool regatta last year, and although I did sort of say I wasn't recking any more of Karps stuff on Shy, well I sorta decided I'd give it one more try


But first I have to make an old mast suitable for the newer style sail...

First Up I made a flared opening for the sail to feed up through and then it was time to Tig up the old cut away sections



tig work done and a quick grind off and we have



244 33594

Down-haul fitted
This is borrowed from Karp's broken mast as is the mast rotator

And a couple of weekends ago I returned to the scene of the crime (Broken mast).....
On the beach having just finished the first race.... and yep thats 2nd place just crossing the line in the background

The old girl went the fastest she's ever gone and I have proof on the time sheet.....
I've got to get a new main for Shy if I'm going to keep on racing her




this is also one of the best pics I've taken of the old girl
OMG..... THAT green STANDS OUT..... Karps new color is really going to have to work hard to beat that !!!

back to the rudder moulding....

remember 1 thing please.....
I've NEVER done this sort of thing before .... so be kind

I used air-drying clay as the lower part of the mould and once I had the desired height set I simply applied the PVA release agent to the rudder and clay base...... and a good smear on the workbench too just incase



Once I had the mould set it was time to duplicate the other side....


Released off of the table and now the fight to release the rudder from the mould begins...



fight over

After a bit of a fight I got the castings off of the rudder with zero damage to the rudder or the 2 moulds.
All up very happy with the end result at this stage, yeah there's a couple of minor holes that I've already filled and blocked back on one of the moulds and its now ready to actually lay a new fibreglass half rudder in..... one minor issue stops me dead in my tracks tho, my glass supplier omitted to put the gel-coat fixer in the package, I guess he was under the pump a tad being xmas and all.
It will be here in a few days time so I can then make my first half cast
nervous times ahead.....
I was going to do it in carbon fibre but seeing this is my first attempt at this sort of thing I'm going to the first set in ordinary chopped mat , then do some sailing with them and see how they go before commiting to a full carbon pair



The 'dark line' you can see through the mould is actually glassed in bits of rope, this has stiffened up the mould significantly to the point where its quite difficult to get any real flex in the moulds.
The heavier sections around the rudder top are glassed in 8mmX10mm cedar offcuts from the stringers when I re-decked Shy

All up happy as.... at the halfway point anyway

The rope in the fibreglass is interesting. Why does it work any better than just adding more fibreglass? Or fibreglass 'channels'?

Basically it is a cheap easy core for a stiffener. The idea is to make a 2D structure, more 3D thus increasing the stiffness of the moulds.

Did you ever weigh Twice Shy Kingy? I may have missed that post ... I can't find it now.

Scarecrow nailed it, the rope addition in the glass stiffens the mould up considerably, sure a stick of wood most likely would be slightly better but wood doesn't bend that well around tight corners....
Its an old speedway trick we used way back when, the glass body panels often developed stress fractures from the riggors of racing, the addition of the rope near edges stiffened up the panel and stopped the vibrations from initialising the fractures.


Yes I weighed Shy, and she WAS fat
No I never "advertised" the weight and don't intend to even now, let just say she's closer to the weight limit than she'd ever have been but could loose a couple more kilo's safely.

The biggest and probably the most surprising weight loss was the 'rubbish' that was removed. A total of ~12 kilos of "bits" of rubbish were removed, this was mainly excess resin dribbles from repairs or original building and the massive build up of what I can only call "road grime" => years of open hatches had let in all sorts of weird stuff....
Included were:
empty beer and coke cans, several butts and dead matches, bits of paper, set of car keys, small shifter, 3 shackle keys, dead birds and a nest, and about a dozen 'matchbox' toy cars!!! ..... the major debris aside from the resin was sawdust and general dust, all up each hull gave up ~3kgs of just dust with the vacuum cleaner

When we did Scorpian the weight loss was even more dramatic than Shy's and yes its above the limit aswell, Phill was amazed at the constant amount of dust we kept sucking out, when its final weight was done he had one huge smile on his face, I still don't think he belived the loss Scorp went through until it hit the scales
The most noticeable thing..... both boats sit on the water in a totally different manor, its that big a difference visibly, they are also diferent ladies on the water too


Could I get even more off ????

Oh yeah.... I have no doubt now that I could get an older heavier boat to go UNDER the weight limit, I keep looking at a certain pair of red hulls and keep thinking.... winter project

Did you end up making the rudders? How did they turn out?

Haven't done them as yet, the moulds are ready to go and the gelcoat/cloth/resin is all sitting there.......

I just need time to actually get some work done on them, and TwiceShy, and the Impara, and JurassicKarp, and the RL, and....

its been a very busy last 6months, how dare work interfere with my hobbies

Kingy there is a guy called Tim at Rye Yacht club that recently broke a rudder blade. If you give Gordon a shout he can put you in contact with him, but I'm thinking if you make a few it might offset the cost of your own.

Luke