Team Seacats

I was waiting for the top coat over the scratch repair to dry, so I decided to string up a rigging test.  I used a piece of plywood (the same one that served as a base for the 1/2 mold beginnings), measured out the approximate locations of the shrouds, mast base, backstay, and forestay, screwed in eye screws, made some temporary 1/16 plywood spreaders and mast crane, and started stringing up the mast.  I used dacron fishing line for the temporary rigging because I can easily change it’s length – the final version will certainly use small diameter stainless cable as I can feel the springy-ness in the dacron pretty easily.  The mast is .25″ carbon fiber tubing and breaks down into two pieces.  Currently, this test rig is at the US1M class legal maximum (I can’t remember at the moment, but I believe it’s 65″).  This would be the “A” rig for really light wind speeds (sub 5 knots).  As far as the boat goes, I think we’re going to standardize on the “B” rig…but since the A will be the tallest possible, it makes since to begin here.  It only took about 45 minutes to put together but while stepping back and tacking an admiration break, it really feels like a milestone.  I’m pleased to be able to see the rig I’ve been visualizing for some time now and will spend some time with different tensions on parts to see their effect.  I’m a little concerned that the 1/4″ pultruded carbon section isn’t going to be stiff enough to get the headstay tension that the boat needs.  I’ll play around with it some but may have to upgrade to a stiffer wound carbon tube or a larger section.

Oh, and I also proved that you can eye-splice this 1/32″ dacron line…that will look great on the sheets!