Messages

I need to replace some sections of rotten sycamore gunwale. Can anyone point me in the righjt direction of a syscamore supplier?
Thanks in anticipation.   
 
Chris

Thanks Tim,
 
Really helpfull advice, the glass tissue sounds the way to go. I think the gunwale is savable if scoop out a couple of short sections and graft in some new wood as before.
 
Cheers
Chris

2 coats of 2-pack and 3 of epithanes. Maybe need 10 coats on the gunwale as it tends to brush on thinly on an edge?
Chris

I have a crusader 2 with a sycamore [I think] gunwale that has seen better days. I tackled the worst last year and replaced 2 short rotten sections and she started the season looking great but now one or two other little bits are not looking so good and there is a spot of rot setting in there. It seems the edges gets worn by the cover and hiking backsides rubbing off of the varnish, then the wood soaks up water like a sponge. She will go into the garage after the boxing day race for some TLC [again].
My options seem to be:

• keep replacing bits
• replace the whole thing [how easy or difficult would that be]
• Replace the rotten bits and cover the whole gunwale in a strip of glass or carbon tape for hard wearing surface.

The varnish and wood elsewhere is good but the gunwale always seems a weak spot in the system. Any suggestions?
Cheers Chris
3300
 

Thanks,
The leach taletales are streaming nicely and the crew does have the jib cleated as crew is not big enough to hold it. Crew may be fearless but 10 mins after the start loses interest in hiking hard in favour of sitting on the side deck and talking [constantly].
 
Flew

Hi,
I have recently purchaced a crusader 2 to club race with my 7 year old daughter. Luckily she is fearless, so we sail whatever the wind. Not carrying a lot of weight between us [about 15 stone] we struggle a bit upwind in 20 Knts plus. In these conditions we set the boat up thus: mast raked back, jib leads back, mast ram off, kicker on full, cunnignham on full and feather our way through the gusts to survive and limit our loss untill we can fly off down wind again and do some catching up. This works quite well but the top batten spends half the time inverted which may be slow and certainly doesnt look good. what can we do to rectify this?
 
Cheers in anticipation

Bought early 2009 by Chris Flewitt & young daughter Ellen and renamed Firefox by the crew - followed by 3 months in the garage having a full refit. All rot gone, new paint and varnish gleaming and getting lots of admiring comments. Firefox is generally regarded as the prettiest boats racing in Langstone Harbour. She is raced most weekends. A new updated photo of the fox in action will be uploaded when I get a decent one.

we already have a dangly pole hence i couln't work out what purpose they had. Would like to replace it with a nice carbon one though so the fishing rod idea is good. We took the barber haulers off anyway and tried out our new child friendly jib sheet arrangement [tuning block in the side deck and jammer on an L block just inboard] in this afternoons race. this has made things way better and in 20knts + and a reachy coarse we were smoking away from the lasers.
N3300

Hi, I have recently swapped rs600 with a Crusader 2 to sail with my young daughter. Love the boat and we are finding are way around the rig controls but am at a loss as to how we use the jib barber haulers. They are lead though bulls eyes in the foredeck so seem to be there to pull the leach tight rather than pull the sheeting angle inboard. When do I use them? PS. The recent thread on re-jigging the jib sheet controls to make them child friendly was great and has solved a problem we have had tacking and mark rounding therby saving several seconds per tack.
Thanks in anticipation of help.