Tired of laminating I started to cut the first sheets for the sail.

Preparing the sail sewing.

My advantage is, that I do have space in my former premises that I can use for the next weeks. So I bought some rolling tables from a bankrupted company. I hope this will ease sewing the sail. (which I will only assist).

Hello Joseph,

Sorry for my late answer, but I enjoyed sailing in Croatia with a conventional sailboat;-)

I do not feel competent enough to give any advice, my method is try and error, when in doubt: Add one layer...

I will try to write something about my ongoing conversion in the boat shed, as Paul asked me to do so. Today I realized that the mast I purchased (tempered flag pole) was slightly damaged by a visitor with his car. Not to take any risk, I will have to buy a new one, which may be thicker than my 150mm/5mm flagpole. Besides the cost I already had this in mind and I am currently laminating in a 200mm/5mm sleeve, that would allow to house a mast of up to 170mm diam. Still I have not decided yet, if  I will have a mast laying device, which would ease any futher alterations concerning the rigging.

As basic material I used 16mm AW100 plywood for the basement and the partners, , the partner rings I screwed with inox screws and glued them together from half rings, which is a lot of additional labour. If you have someone nearby to cut out the rings f.e. with a CNC machine, that would probably save quite some hours of effort. also a cone could be easily shaped, which eases the later laminating.

As I could place my new mast foreward enough to save the front hatch, I also used the front hatch support and reinforced it by 3 layers of plywood.

As lateral reinforcement for the deck partners I glued in two "beams" of plywood 100 X 16 which I reinforced by another layer of 70X16 plywood. Laminating the whole construction with 5 layers of 450gr/m² triaxial glass fabrice. The same I did from the lower deck partner to the bow (rather to the anchor chest).

On deck 4 layers of plywood make the base for the upper partner, laminated with 10 layers of both bidirectional and triaxial fabrice.

The keel bottom is made of 4 layers plywood, the most difficult for me was to get the bottom partner half way horizontal, though my 200mm/5mm sleeve will allow some adjustment play to get the mast straight.

Slowliness is Holyness

Today the first step (the mast step) was laminated. 3 layers of plywood 16mm (A100) glewed in the front section and laminated with 2 layers of 300gr roving + 1 layer of 450gr roving. Will be reinforced when laminating the partner for the sleeve in the correct angle.

I wonder if I should put a metal plate to the bottom, or if epoxy laminate will be strong enough to withstand the hammering of the mast. 

I decided to work with a 200/5mm aluminum tube as sleeve for the mast.

Is there any experience how to pull the mast out once it should be filled with moulding PU in the sleeve, any separator advice? Or rather use wedges?

More questions to arise...

From memory, when David Tyler decided to remove the mizzen mast from Tystie, which had been held in place with Spartite, he ended up cutting the mast off at deck level, as it wouldn't budge.  I have heard that if you have tapered partners, and use a release agent, or even a plastic film, you should be able to knock it out from below with a rubber mallet.  If you are going to place your mast inside that alloy sleeve, then I suggest that, if you want to remove it again, you'd be better off using softwood wedges.  On Arion, I used western red cedar wedges and it proved to be an ideal material.