Bow Tube

I was going to make a carbon fibre pole, but after much deliberation, I have decided to go with aluminium.
The problem being that with a bow tube of 95mm & a tube of 80mm OD, I needed to make a bush for the difference.I had some 100mm round waterpipe so I made a set of shims & used some of the blue PVC glue to glue them together. After a bit of adjusting i got a good fit & the pole slides in them.
With a bearing at the both ends of the tube the pole is a neat sliding fit.









This is the set up for retaining the bow pole. Instead of nuts I will get a couple of 12mm wing nuts.

Bits & pieces

It was way too hot this week for any resin work, 3 days of 40 degrees C + weather. So what work that was done was prep work. One purchase that I made was a Dremel tool. It is fantastic for all those fiddly & hard to get to places. With a variety of bits it is great, although it is not designed for continuous use as it gets a bit warm.



I decided to add a bow wing but the big decision was where to fit it. I ended up fitting it just at the rear of the forestay bracket. This created another problem in that I would not be able to fit the pin for the bow pole. I solved this by bogging 2 12mm s/steel bolts either side of the bow tube. Once they are in place I will cove them in & wrap them in tape. I have some off cut of 10mm aluminium bar that will form a backing plate to hold the pole in place which will be held in place by 2 wing nuts.







I also made up some foam shapes to provide some shape to the CMM areas so that the water does not pool there.



I also cut out the holes for the rear cockpit hatches & did the initial fit to the rear mast support.