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