Just thought I would update you on what we are doing with Ronin.
As the water at Weirwood Reservoir is seriously low making sailing extremely hazardous the winter refit has started early, it was orginally planned for Christams holidays and New Year, the upside is that this will allows us to do some of the winter events such as the Grafham Grand Prix, Bloody Mary etc. Anyone going to join us ?
So far, we have completed the following :-
1. Stripped all the fittings off
2. Removed all the progrip
3. Sanded the foredeck and crew area. Found out that non-slip paint is really hard to get off. Took about 5 hours of orbital sanding to finally get it all off, still got to do the kick bars to do though
4. Sanded and faired the outside of the hull. Made up a 6mm and 4mm torture boards from ply about 600mm long with a handle each end. Sand paper secured with removal carpet tape. Worked really well
5. Filled all the dents and hollows with epoxy and micro balloon filler
6. Made a carbon cone for the inboard end of the pole to prevent damge to mast posts, see below
Still to do before she goes to Monkey Marine in Weymouth for a respray on the 20th November
1. Sand down hull and deck filler
2. Repair the two mast posts under the foredeck, where the pole has hit constantly hit them
3. Repair the kick bars, I believe Pete Barton also had trouble with these
4. Build a new raised and curved spinnaker chute mouth, this should help with kite drops
5. Build new higher carbon jib cleat tower
6. Put a carbon plate under the mast step as this is showing signs of very slight movement
7. New hatch in forward tank accessible through spinnaker chute
So far we have filled a 1 litre ice cream tub with paint dust which is beginning to weigh quite a bit, I think this only accounts for 1/3 of the dust, the rest is all over the garage and now making its way into the house and outside !! Hopefully we have removed more paint than will be put back on
I'll post some pictures when I get her out of the garage in a couple of weeks before the respray
She is going to be sprayed with Awlgrip (colour to be decided soon), anyone have any experience of this.
Hopefully Ronin will look as good as new by Christmas when the water should be back to normal sailing levels
Cheers
Paul and Peter
Ronin - 2698
