30 th April

Beautiful day here in the Azores today.  No wind and nice and warm - perfect for painting!!  Got the deck done.  Finish not perfect by any means but will be covered with non slip (ordered) so hopefully all the bad bits will be hidden.  At least very well protected.

Postie delivered my 16 ton  hydraulic crimper so now I can start making test samples to do stress tests.  Going to make short samples of 5mm and 6mm ss (7by19) cable as well as 3mm and 6mm dyneema to test my splicing etc. 7x19 316 cable available here.  Going to use my tractor hydraulics and my 1000kg digital scale with a block and tackle system to get up to 2000kg stress - I figure that should be enough..  Plans call for 5mm 1x19 shrouds but that is difficult for me to crimp.  7x19 is much easier to crimp over an eye so opted for 6mm which is about the same breaking strain and only a fraction heavier. If all my testing and fiddling fails I will just have to go expensive and import.  My stainless steel idea is to use 6mm (7x19) shrouds and twin 5mm forestays (7/19).  If it goes bad after a few years it will be cheap for me to replace.   Also playing with Dyneema and going to do stress tests but not sure it will be allowed for the Challenge.  Great fun doing splices and making soft shackles though.

 Going to break some stuff to see how strong it is.  Watch this space and I will post all my results in the next week or so. If my small tractor is not up to it I have some friends with MONSTER tractors.

My mast and boom is under construction at the moment  from Trimet in Poland and should be shipped soon and sails from Narwal should be on their way soon as well.  Mainsail,  2 hank on foresails, 1 roller furl foresail, storm jib, and gennaker.   

Weather forecast looks lousy for the next days so not going to mix any paint and going to play with rigging stuff.