Stainless Steel Shine

Here are a few picture of the bow piece and the rudder plate I will use on my boat. It is all heavy stainless steel. Probably too heavy for most of the racers out there. But I like the shine and glow of those parts.

The bow piece is simple and as you can tell the spi pole will go though it. Might not be class legal because my forestay attachement will stay above the ring and if you project it forward , it will actually meet the deck level forward of bow.

Oh well ! Until another i550 gets build to race me down here, that is what I will have on my boat.

The rudder plate is very straight forward but very cool. The rudder will be pined down by a long rod inserted through the 2 transom and 2 rudder heavy duty gudgeons. The pin is then pushed down, compressing a spring, and hold underneath a hook which is itself welded to the plate.

Should hold well any force applied on the rudder itself. I would be very surprise if those fail before the rudder do.

Shine on....

Non skid taping

Here is a short update on what I have been doing. Boat is almost finished and one of the last building steps will be applying the non skid.

I bought a can of white Kiwigrip which I custom colored to a light grey. Then I masked the boat with blue tape.

That is a long but amusing job to do as it gives you a chance to visually check out for the boat symmetry

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Still some more taping to do, mainly rounding off the corners of the masking tape, then some sanding to (unfortunately) rough off that glossy Perfection surface, and I ll be ready to spread the Kiwigrip all over the boat. As a matter of fact I really do mean all over as most of the surface will be painted over.

No matter what though, I will leave that keel support as it is because I really dig its zebra look.