It's OFF!!!
Sat, 30 Aug 08 08:27
Yesterday was a dismal day. The only thing that could possibly bring us undone did. Having made both the steering mechanisms totally independant, the only thing that could take them both out... did.
I'm not going to say much else about it... the last video of Run 50 pretty well sums up what followed. This morning we will perform the 'walk of shame' over on speed-spot to bring the wing back.
Yesterday I was not a nice person to be around. When the RIB came alongside I got in it and drove away from the floating wreckage. I didn't want to look at it 'again' ...I felt like getting on a plane and leaving it all behind. That was yesterday, today is all about repairing and improving. We know what caused it although we are surprised it happened. It is related to the new aft planing surface which as mentioned in an earlier blog, was stronger than the old one.... SO WHY DID IT TEAR OFF???
Oh well, all the breakages are annoyingly familiar. We could draw white dotted lines on this boat with 'In case of wing backwinding... break here' signs.
No photo's or videos... we've seen it before. I am determined to get it fixed within a week although am considering a thorough overhaul of the back of the boat. Malc will be here on Tuesday and we'll discuss it in detail then. We have already begun on the repairs.
I told you we weren't out of the woods yet!!!
Cheers, Paul.
Keep the faith...
Submitted by modelyacht on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 14:56.Sorry to hear the news.
Don't give up, you're getting there!
Formerly Anonymous...
It's Off - again
Submitted by John Taylor on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:57.Hi Paul,
How about replacing the straight compression strut with a slightly curved one that will fail progressively without causing collateral damage?
Cheers,
John Taylor
Reply to John...
Submitted by Paul on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 10:13.Hi John,
we have discussed this a number of times within the team. There are few nice aspects about the crash scenario in that it is now breaking on the 'dotted lines'. When the beam folds it dampens the fall of the wing in a manner that makes it totally avoid the beam and this means that the wing itself sustains relatively little damage and the beam breakage remains local. last time we had a fuse blow on the strut support system or the strut itself fail... it did a shed-load more damage over the full length of the wing and beam. It was a real mess. I'm much happier with the known quantity of the current failure scenario. 'Better the devil you know' and all that stuff.
It was an annoying failure as it stems from a very small and seemingly insignificant piece of laminate. The repair is already well underway. I reckon on a little over a week this time.
Cheers, Paul.