• Untitled Document

    Join us on March 29rd, 7pm EST

    for the CBEC Virtual Meeting

    All EYO members and followers are welcome to join the fun and get to know the guest speaker!

    See the link below for login credentials and join us!

    March Meeting Info

    (dismiss this notice by hitting 'X', upper right)

Finally

Guy Stevens

Moderator
Moderator
Well we finally took Aiki off the dock, tuned up the rig, hoisted the white floppy things. As is normal with the bay, we started off in light to non existant winds, and then built to over 30 knots in the afternoon in the slot.

It was a good sail, followed by two more this weeked, although both of them were in the estuary, we learned a lot. There are some photos of the sails on www.svaiki.com check em out......

Guy
:)
 

Attachments

  • nice clean stern shot.jpg
    nice clean stern shot.jpg
    19.2 KB · Views: 244

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Thanks for the link! What a huge project and what great progress you have made!
It's a lovely boat.
Cheers,
Loren
 

ChrisS

Member III
Really phenominal overview of your work. Congrats! I'll see you out on the Bay.

--Chris
 

CaptnNero

Accelerant
Curious

Guy, belated congratulations on the accomplishment that you and Melissa achieved with Aiki. I recently got caught up on the transformation that you did, including all of the grinding, welding, and tabbing work shown on your websites. That is an awesome project, well done. The website is great reference material too.

It was exciting to hear about the 6 knots performance in the light airs last month. I didn't see anything about how she did in the strong winds that day. Can you pass along some description of the rest of Aiki's performance ? Perhaps that just needs to remain classified like the Navy's aircraft carrier top speeds. ;)

Another question that I had was what was the reason for cutting and sistering the ring ribs ?
 

Guy Stevens

Moderator
Moderator
We have had her out to 35 knots so far

In the bay we have had her out in up to 35 knots. She was smoking right along. She behaved well and was easy to helm and sail in all regards. We had a little too much sail up. I think the main needs one more reef beyond the skimpy two that we have. Also we have a stay sail that will go into the newly repaired Palmer Johnson box and should allow us to reduce even more sail from the pointy end. (however at this point the main is the culprit for sure.) We kept the heel down for most of the sail, at times being overcanvassed did lead to more heel than would be good for speed, but mostly we just cruised along.


AS for how fast we were going..... Well the paddle wheel on the instruments fouled some interesting gunge so it didn't work. And I thought that my instruments were not working, until I figured out that a guest had managed to turn off the GPS somehow. (GPS feeds the data to a cockpit display) So I don't know how fast we were going. Better than 9.5 judging by the stern wave.

Another day we had her out in 25 or so knots and were doing in excess of 9.5 knots by both the GPS and the Paddle wheel. Didn't seem like top speed, we needed to get some more of our sail handeling and selection worked out on that day. There was a stern wave, but not much of one.

The ring or U frames, or chainplates or whatever you want to call them are welded from two pieces of aluminum plate at either the factory or by Sparcraft, judging from the finish, and the quality of the welding I suspect the factory. The penetration measured on the welds from the factory was 1/32" not a typo .031". All of the 46's that I have looked at so far 4 or 5 of them have fractured this weld. It doesn't seem to make a huge difference for the boat in normal usage.

However I tend to take my boats off the beaten path and out into big blue water. I knew that I was not going to sleep with them fractured. Sooooo..... Bob Lavazzo, (by far the best welder I have ever seen), came over welded them with 100% penetration, (Hence the cutting of the V's to accomplish the penetration desired), and then we sistered them.

The thought behind the sistering was that it eliminated any possiblity of point loading at the joint between the two plate pieces, and only doubled or trippled the time it took to do the job. :)

It was a long day of welding for Bob, about 6 hours of it to be exact. But the results are awesome, and I feel better about the boat and her ability to handle anything that might come our way.

I will get the GPS turned back on and deliver more numbers as soon as I have them.

Guy
:)
 

rbonilla

"don't tread on me" member XVXIIIII
nice trip report Guy, the bay area has to be one of the best environments for a nice ericson....:egrin:
 
Top