Sunday, January 06, 2013

Sailing day!


Finally sailing. The wind was light and variable, so nothing too challenging, but I did get one or two very nice runs out of her, and learned a thing or two about sailing.

This ought to be the last post in this blog, because I should be out on the water, sailing, and not on the internet..

posted by Niel Malan @ 11:39 0 comments

Friday, January 04, 2013

Rigging test

Today we had the dinghy out on the lawn, for a combined photograph opportunity and rigging test. We made sure that all the ropes were ready and that we knew how to put everything together, and that we had all the pieces we needed. For a moment or two the slight breeze filled the sail, and it was beautiful.

posted by Niel Malan @ 11:30 0 comments

Cleaning the spars.

Today I scrubbed the spars. They got full of finger marks and I wrote some indications on them and they suffered from accumulated dirt, so I got some scouring powder and a bucket of water, and scrubbed the length of them. I think the pictures show that it has been worthwhile: two have been cleaned, one not, and the difference is clear.


posted by Niel Malan @ 09:00 0 comments

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Prettiest dinghy in the whole world

Today she's the prettiest dinghy in all the world.

posted by Niel Malan @ 18:56 0 comments

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Inspection covers.

After some long thinking and wondering I came upon a solution to the problem of how to make the inspection port covers secure yet removable. My attempt to have them held with a screw system ran into problems when it then proved almost impossible to remove. Having observed that they're quite difficult to remove when they're just pushed firmly home, I decided to have friction keep them in, and then have a simple tool to pull them out. This lead to a saddle for each plug, which can be pulled with a simple L-shaped hook. I believe they'll be secure enough during sailing, and easy enough to remove for storage.

posted by Niel Malan @ 23:10 0 comments