Making KAROs look good

The le Havre GOLD CUP is only days away, final preparations are underway.
Today boat 04 got it's final paint.

I found some super cheap acrylic paint sprays in baumax, a big market selling building and gardening supplies.
With all the pinholes fixed the paint turned out really nice, smooth and shiny.
It's a low quality paintjob but it is lightweight and generally good enough for footys.
The name of  boat 04 will be Jaundice, just because every other yellow boat is called
banana-something ;)
Boat 03 also got the first of the two coats of black paint.

today the temperature here in Maribor droped to 23degrees C and the cheap paint takes the whole day to dry, in comparison to the more expensive sprays which take about 1h to dry at this temperature, but for 1/3rd of the price the cheap one works superbly.

KARO 2 ready 4 water

It's ready!
The intention is to be on the water everyday during the upcoming week.
The paint should be finished on sunday, till then a revised A+ rigg will be build ready to be tested.
From then on the three things to do are to build a B rigg and A+ rigg for the father, find something to transport the riggs safely and sail as much as possible.

2nd Karo will hit the water on friday.

Today the deck was glued on. The keel was properly aligned. Using the keel for reference the two pivot holes were glued in( at 5 degree rake) and finally the rudder tube was aligned and glued with epoxy(deck was glued with super glue).
The alignment took me alot of time, as it is super-hard to align everything in the deep hull, so if any more Karos are going to be build, a keel-mast box will be introduced, and everything will be glued together on a jig, that way, time will be saved and proper alignment will be achieved easily.
Overall i am happy  with this boat, tho only two grams have been saved with a different deck frame.
 Now it's time to fight the porosion holes.
here are some photos of the boat:

2nd Karo build started

Here are some pictures of the hull, it came out much better than the first one, the only problematic spot is the bow, where some fillar will be needed.

The boat should hit the water the fifth day from now.

Footy B-rigg

Yesterday the B-rigg was finished.
It has about 1080 sqcms of sail, and an aspect ratio of 2.1.
at the moment it works fine, the boat points well and gets up to max speed quickly when sailing upwind, tacks are super fast(becouse of the big rudder) but yet controlable. Downwind it was just a matter of reducing sail area. It needs no backstay as the mast is a hobbyking 4mm carbontube, it has  super thin walls, so it bends under gusts depowering the sail.
On this rigg no ballast on the boom is needed and the total weight of the rigg is 33g.

Here are a few pictures from the pond, when i find the time i'll post some better ones

Gold cup Karo hits the water & rigg details

Today i verified the performance of the new boat. arrived at the pond to find it was full of people fishing and their fishing lines. I moved to the only free spot on the shore, and started sailing. the wind was somewhat gusty with 10-15knots of speed, the water was teribbly choppy. But the boat seems to perform well, despite the missing bowbumper. soon it started to make water due to a porosion hole in the bow, but that was a quick fix.
Anyway here are some crappy phone pictures:

here are some pictures of the 1260cm2 a rigg, wich is good for winds up to 15knots, and makes a really nice shape.

the karo project is still ongoing!
things to do:
-finish the "body work", yellow paint
-build a boat for myself(this one will be skippered by my father)
-build and test the b rigg(a+ and c are allready done and running fine)
-build some more hulls so i can offer them to anyone interested

1st carbon Karo on finishing streak

here are some bad pictures of the boats current stage.

The white paint is spray filar, in use to eliminate porosion pinholes, the deck is 2x80g/m2 glass, as it is the lightest laminate i had laying around.

this is the deck setup, a simple servo casette acting as a hatch and two pivot holes for the unarig.
the aft one is used in the lower windrange and the front one in the upper w.r. of the riggs, the exeption is the 1600something cm2 A+ rigg, wich is suitable only for use in the front hole.
The plan is to try a classic rigg on this boat, as the ce could be lowered by some 10cm! but sacrificing the relatively high aspect ratio.

here is everything but the bulb and the rigg, painting is expected to add some 5g.
The max lwl volume of the boat is 540g,
i am targeting for the 520 mark, A rigg = 40g leaves for the bulb 322g...
the above gives a ballast to weight ratio of 0.62 or 62% wich is ok, but the depron boat had a 350g bulb and 520g all up, wich gave it a ratio of 0.67.
before the gold cup i plan on building two more boats and i will try to make up the lost 8%(28g) of ballast.
To finish, even if i never build a lighter boat than this one, the composite hull is still the way to go, because it doesn't bend or fall apart and as far as i am concerned i prefer to sail a boat that functions and handles properly, than a faster boat wich is hard to control and demands alot of imput to get it on the water.

Angeldust making good progress!

The plan is to have the boat on the water in five weeks, to get alot of time for testing, improving and building a mould before the eros in Greece in november.
The hull of mould was 76g(layup:80g/m2 carbon, 3x50g/m2 glass), from here on i'll let the pictures to do the talking:

The shadows, wich are to be the support frames for building fit snuggly.

the downhaul is still a question but other than that the rigg is nearly there. For the beginning it's sporting flat sails with a 6mm luff curve.

First Karo of the mould

The first hull is far from perfect, the weight is good, but there are some bad impregnation spots, but since i was in a hurry it is satisfactory to see the edges with no bubbles and the hull is with no gelcoat so porosion will be an enemy. CARO (c-for carbon ;) should hit the water next weekend.

Fila sailing sessions

At the moment i do next to no dinghy sailing, so i try to compensate with models, my Fila goes to every pond with me, i am happy to do 8-9 hours on the water per week.
The boat performs well, but the jib needs replacement with a profiled one, fore more power in light air(at the moment all the sails are flat). Measuring the speed via iphone in the boat and using the runtastic app the boat sails at an average speed of 1.9-2 knots in 20minutes, sailing in the upper a-rigg range. This is very satisfying since the hull speed for f5g is some 2.1knots.
 Here are some pictures from our local pond:

The things to improve on the boat are:
-solving the cunningham issue, if it is tight the sail won't pop from side to side of the mast easily.
-profiled jib
-have to make a mould for the rudder, the boat is running a prototype rudder which has 40g =>heavy

RG65 - Angel Dust

Finally my rg65 project is making some progress. Today i layedup the first hull on a positive mould.
Its a relatively conservative boat nothing extreme yet.
from the simetric shape of the waterlines when heeled i would say that it will be well balanced upwind. At the momemnt the ce leads clr for 12% of lwl, in the future ce will probably be recesed, in search of the weather helm balance that suits my style of sailing.
Anyway here is the "above waterline" sketch:

The displ. Is about 960g, jib:main ratio is 40:60, mast rake 5deg. And freeboard in the fornt 7cm + 3cm.
For starters i will be using a 30cm deep keelfinn, later i plan on developing a keel wich gathers the most of area just below the hull, and the bulb is then supported by a profiled strut.