Crash Damage Repair

dinghy parts and repairs

Port/Starboard incident collision damage in 15 to 18 knot winds with both boats travelling to windward fully pressured up. Having the starboard right doesn't mean one can take the eye off the ball (as it were) and away from what the rest of the fleet is doing. Biggest crash in 30 years of sailing Finns, not a bad strike rate (pun intended!). Sure, have blown out a number of sails and broken one mast, so all in all not a bad record.

And no, the other Finn suffered not a skerrick of damage, not even a scratch to the bow. Built tough those Devoti's!

dinghy parts and repairs

Mind you, the way we rebuilt this Finn meant that the collision happened at the most vulnerable spot. Torsion forces through the boat are distributed through the gunnel and the centre monocoque section.

Collision was right smack bang (love those puns!) between the two cross beams and where the gunnels are at their most stressed. She simply popped like an archers bow pulled beyond the breaking point.

Deck (shown laying in the cockpit) is but a lightweight single layer 800 ounce quad axis cloth designed to only keep out the water, and is not a structural member of the boat.

dinghy parts and repairs

After cutting away the collision damage, the new gunnel was layed up. To maintain the ability off the gunnel to be a stressed member of the boat, 6 layers of 4mm plywood (original gunnel was 4 layers of 6mm plywood) was layed up, each one "stepped" into a 4 mm deep, 50 mm long rebate cut some distance up into the old gunnel.

Epoxy glued, clamped and screwed into the hull and existing gunnel.

dinghy parts and repairs

With the new gunnel reforming the hull back into its original shape, the internal patch was applied. Patch is a layup of carbon and fibreglass.

Yellow rods are the closed foam, forward flotation devices hanging loosely under the foredeck.

dinghy parts and repairs

Hull prepared for the outer patch. Patch will consists of one layer of horizontal carbon unis sandwiched between double bias fibreglass.

dinghy parts and repairs

Exterior hull patch applied and roughly faired.

Deck patch layup of 10 ounce cloth sandwiched in double biased fibreglass.

3mm Plywood bearers glued underside of the existing deck to glue the new deck patch onto.

dinghy parts and repairs

Edges of the deck patch and gunnel coved, glassed, filled, faired and painted.

Hull faired and ready for final sand and paint.

Repair completed.

View the 2013 Update

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