Good work. Keep on posting, interesting read. I am keen to know what you are going to do with trailer modifications .

another quick snapshot.....

as you can see "room" to get my hands into the foredeck side of the hulls was damn tight let alone seeing what I was doing , now imagine having to move the glass mat around and then apply resin and smoooooth it all out....

mutter mutter mutter.....

lack of room was a major pain in the butt



and yes (as you can obviously see) ... surgical tools became a great choice, clamp please nurse.... syringe full of resin please nurse....

repair.... nah this was surgery

no their not at all, but the design allows me to get access to them fairly easily.
Te rear beam attatchment is a tad more difficult, but if I move the hatches back about 30mm I should have no dramas at all, my arms were just a bit long to do it comfortably..... need a folding wrist at times

Ahhhhh yeah about that.......

Your in for a bit of a wait


but.....

I'll be widening the main drawbar, which will in turn widen the foward "cradling" points for the front beam
(works out to be about 130mm wider at the beam cradling point)
I'll also be adding as couple of stiffining plates to reduce the drawbar flex.

removing one leaf from the spring pak (softening the ride and we all like a soft ride every now n then )

altering the rear carrying points completely (which caused this issue in the first place )

fitting a larger sailbox (cause the current one is a tad small)

and I'm thinking of increasing the actual wheel size.... mini wheels are ok ..... for minis
oddly enough toyota corolla rims fit perfectly...



the trailer side isnt an issue for me..... its what I sort of do for a living.....

here's a duel mozzie setup I did a few months ago...

Hi all, interesting setup on trailer, i usally have the top boat upside down, is it much wind-age in that configuration, and is it top heavy?

Matt
The joker 1826
Mossie pres

When I spoke to the owner last about it he was more than happy with it and the way it all works..... they'd towed it a couple of hundred K's and didnt notice any differance from a solo cat to the duel cat towing, so far all's good


I built it for a father / son combination where there are the odd times when they both wish to go to the same regatta, otherwise the two boats are usually carted around on their own trailers for club events.

The setup in the pic is "slip on" so the extra boat carrying pieces can be stored easily for solo boat use, and easily fitted when the two of them wish to head off together.... it takes about 10mins to slip on the duel carrier setup AND the 2nd mozzie by 2 people.
When the duel setup is removed you'd struggle to spot the differance from a std trailer to this one.....


Both top and bottom mozzies are carried by the front and rear beams and both masts can easily be placed on the top of the loaded boats from the side and do not interefer (rub) with each other.

the only disadvantage I can see is you HAVE TO remove the top boat in order to get the bottom boat off... no big deal seeing that both boats are going racing

the soft deck.....

the worst area has ~8mm of defelection with most of the deck easily moving 3~4mm with slight pressure.




with the deck peeled off and the foam sub-frames cut out I then cut up some new ones.....
pic shows the old frames and you can clearly see the collapsed area.
The failing foam wasn't the only issue, two of the timber stringers had also failed, one had snapped and the other had seperated from the glue...... that explains the "rattle" I had when a gentle thump was applied to the deck


sub-frame #5 had compressed the most, as you can see its actully curved in the opposite direction to the deck shape



The new frames have been cut, given a light coat of resin for added strength, and had a final trim to fit perfectly.
I've also decided on a stringer support design that I'm happy with.
the "I"beam design is great, but the time restraint means many w/ends of toiling away in the shed, secondly, only one deck needs this repair so its pointless in distroying a good deck just for duplication reasons....
So I've come up with a very simple plate that will add support to the stringers, and tie the 2 hull sides together..... it can aslo easilly be slipped into place without major issues in the hull with the good deck.

Although the foam sub-frames are cut and ready to fit, half of them are being fitted with the support plates prior to the final fitting to the hull.

new subframes being made and test fitted....

the ply on the subframes (laying on the fordeck) will give you a hint as to which way I'm going.....

ready to be glued in



Once they are good n solidly stuck, I'll cut some little rebates for the stringers and then glue in the stringers.
The ply will spread the load accross a large area compared to the stringer just sitting in the foam..... It has the added advantage of tieing the two hull sides together..... and its lighter than the I-beam.... and I can install these on the other side without spending hours n hours cutting/forming/ makeing little bits/glueing..... yawn !!!

I contemplated fitting a "deck plate" (for want of a better word) to each foam subframes, but doing every 2nd frame seemed better and had the right look... in doing every 2nd foamy it comes out to 270mm between each deck plate which is hell of a lot more support than its ever had

the best bit is that each deck plate works nicely into the areas that see a lot of butt action...

nice break..... gotta love holidays

The new subframes cut to the deck shape and fitted in place

stringer slots cut and test fitting of the stringers done

So while I'm "in there"..... I found a couple of uglies, previous repairs that had long since past their use-by date, so these have been re-done and are now all good.

this is the worst one I encountered....

starboard side of the port hull at the transom.

cleaned up and ready for glassing

if you look closely...... you'll notice a "mark" on the starboard hull, just behind the beam mount...

interesting as it sort of seems about the same age as the damaged section of the port hull but far less severe...



closer shot of the damage ....


me thinks another cat may have been the cause of these two strikes


regardless of when / where / or whatever, these two impacts have been re-repaired and the hulls are now in a clean tidy condition.....

With the hull repairs all finished I can get back to the deck rebuild.
I added ply plates to the port hull so it matched the starboard hulls design, these were fiddly to do as I didn't remove the stringers from that hull.... Matt had rebuilt this side a few years back and the setup was still reasonably sound, no point in making work for myself, although it probably would have been quicker to rip them out in hind sight.

in this shot you'll notice a couple of major changes.....

1/
the fore decks have been removed

2/
the port hull's centreboard case stiffener has been removed






Item 2....
I wasn't happy with the height of the centreboard case stiffener, it had put a bulge in the deck and subsequently fine cracks had appeared at both the front and rear of the actual case slot.
My deck shape template showed that the case was sitting about 6mm too high, obviously this placed a major strain on the deck in that area.

Item 1
I had a "rattle" in the hull and no matter what I did I couldn't shake what ever it was free nor could I get it to move down enough to be able to physically remove it ....
the deck simply had to come off

and the culprit was......




any wonder I couldn't shake it out

the 3rd reason I removed the foredecks was for the front shroud mounts, both of these had movement, granted it wasn't a huge amount but they should be solid, the starboard hull mount was slightly worse with a distinct click each time it was nudged, The actual fixing is good but the bolts had simply come loose.
They also have a small washer on the nut side and this really isn't big enough to spread the load evenly through the timber sub-frame. A larger plate will replace 2 of the washers and the 3rd bolt will have to do as it is, its simply in-accessible.

foot note:
The front stay mounts have 3 holes for mounting, Being in the fabrication/engineering game I hate this type of connection, odd numbered connections simply don't work as well as even numbered connections, reason being one of the bolts will ALWAYS act as a hinge or lever point on the other bolts....

just sayin

So where am I up to at the moment.......

all the repairs have been done, and the work on the deck strengthening is completed, and I've made a few minor mods to other sections such as adding 2 stringers to both hulls from the transom plate to the rear beam (one had been damaged purely from being leaned on so they were obviously a tad weak).

I've spent endless hours scraping / chipping excess resin from all over the hulls..... 5 vacuum cleaner bags full to be precise plus a good sized amount of chippings that the vacuum simply couldn't take due to the size
All up.... ~6kgs of "rubbish" has been stripped from both hulls. I have added ~1kg of additional material with my design changes / strengthening.

gotta be happy .... a fitness program where the boat gains a major strength upgrade and yet looses more fat than was added


Plans for this weekends work, fit new fore decks and rear decks.

couple of quick ones.....

the new stringers I've fitted to the rear deck area, should also help with the hatch which was just bolted to the ply deck

closer shot of the centre case stiffeners, this was ~20mins after being glued in

that troublesome front forestay mount that's loose
mutter mutter mutter ......

you can just make out the gap between the resin and the plate which is due to the plate movement.



the other side view......
note the washers that are fitted, any wonder there's movement.


As you can see I'll have to "dig" the top bolt from its grave of resin in order to fix it properly.....
more hours of time on the fiddly stuff

& naturally.... guess which side I need access to.... yeah that would be the one where I'll need a child sized mit

mutter mutter mutter