Not so fast!

I'm currently sailing a Coco Minitransat 6,50.
It's a pretty competitive boat for its class. We participate in most races in the north of Portugal .
Despite the fact that we have won 9 out of 10 races in corrected time, by the time we cross the line everybody else has already gone through a couple of nice and cold beers.
The trimaran project is a means to turn this fate around . We will probably beat most monohulls to the beer but I'm not so sure about the final position regarding corrected time.
Right now we just want to go as fast as money can buy!

For more on the Minitransat take a look at this youtube clip,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivPFuk3P-iw

Vacuum Pump

Today I spent most of the time out shopping for some stuff I need. I also picked up a vacuum bagging kit I had ordered from Greece. I have some homework to go through before I set up the whole thing ( valves,filters,pressure gauge,etc).

I ran into some dificulty trying to put the pump up and running. The instructions where not very clear about the need to add oil or not. According to the manual the oil level should come up to the marked line after two minutes running but it didn't so I figured I had to add some oil. I kept on adding oil time and time again and nothing so I figured the bottle contained the exact amount of oil needed to reach the desired level. Wrong!

I ended up going way over the limit and had to drain out the excess. In the end everything went back to normal and I'm very pleased the pump is operational.

Tooling time

I´ve got the strongback almost finished. I managed to borrow a laser from a local contractor for a couple of hours to make sure I get a pretty leveled base then I used some masonry fast cement to level the feet and after I'm going to glue it to the concrete with epoxy.
As you can see I have plenty of space to build the boat without getting too much in the way of the family's daily routine. But that came at some cost. With the money I spent on the new roof I could build two sets of floats. Then again it's an investment in the house and it could make the project a lot easier.

Today I received the glass, epoxy, foam and fillers.
I already did some tests with the Airex and I'm pretty satisfied with it's flexibility.

Now it's time to think about some custom tools to speed up the job. I'm planning to build a simple foam cutting jig with the possibility to cut at a predefined anlgle to create a v groove for gluing. If it works out well I'll let you know.
I'll also need to build a cart for the glass rolls and some sort of worksation on wheels to carry around the most frequently used tools and acessories.
Now it's the moment to invest some time in preparing the work. Hopefully things will run smoother. Three days spent now tooling up may save 1 to two hours a day for many months to come.

Ground Zero

Today I started the strongback construction. I have all the elements ready for assembly but I'm going the use the extra long side panels to join the scarfed battens.
I've already ordered the basic lamination materias and if the temperature and humidity fall in the right range along the coming days I'm all set to go!