Pirates!

Much has been written about pirates at sea. This week it was our turn: Dreamtime was attacked, boarded and invaded by two ferocious pirates: Josh and Cooper. Grandchildren to the owners of the nursery where I am fortunate to have working space, they boarded, and politely asked if they could come and see what I am doing. They gave some real help: Cooper crawled right into one of the cabinets I made to hold the spanner to a recalcitrant nut.

And we had a stow-away too: Cooper decided he likes the cabinets under the front bunk as a hidey-hole.

What a pleasure to have such nice, well brought-up pirates on board!

Stow-away1

Sails

I am bored with woodwork. I learnt a lot, also about fibreglassing, but it is just taking too much time. So I ordered the rest of the sailcloth and reworked the sailplan.

What material? Well, it is something that the cute Tanya with the nice accent tells me will last for ever in bright sunlight. So there. It is a ripstop thingy called ALIAS MPC 1.8.

The sailplan is a chinese rig, with abut 32 square meters. I had it in my head for a long time, but only recently put it down on paper. There may be a jib in front in due course, we will see. I decided to use 25mm fibleglass pipes for battens. A little pricey, and probably way overkill.

David helped me lay out and cut the panels, with Shahnaz' invaluable assistance. Pythagoras helped determine a square foot. Thanks, old boy!

Now the panels have to be trimmed, the proper seams installed, and then the big one: The sails have to have some shape. I decided to try Roger Taylor,'s triple H sail, see his YOuTube video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-IbUt-CTRQ 

As usual the possible sailmakers backed out, so yours truly will do the honours. Watch this space...

laying out the battens. Pythagoras helped ensure that the
 foot of the sail is square. 

David and I laying out the sails. It was blistering hot.