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Van

Boom teardown–outhaul revealed

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OK, so the sailing season is over for us, and I have started several projects, including tearing down the boom.

Prop Analysis and Replacement – Part III: The Second Axiom Prop

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We hauled out on July 21st, hoping to “haul and hang” for an hour to pull off the old Axiom and put on the new one, but with the nagging fear in the back of our minds that we should have replaced the white metal bearing during our haul out in June.

Prop Analysis and Replacement – Part I

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Rainshadow has a 16 inch diameter, 12 inch pitch propeller that is specified by Camper and Nicholson for the Nic 38.  It sits in an aperture, which is about 20 inches in diameter.  She also has the original Perkins 4-108 with a 2:1 reduction transmission.  We find there are three major problems.

A Double Double Rainbow

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I’m sure most people have seen a double rainbow – in good conditions you can see both the primary rainbow (caused by diffraction of light exiting a raindrop after a single internal reflection) and a “secondary” rainbow, caused by diffraction of the light after two internal reflections. But have you seen a “double double rainbow”?

Alternate chainplate design ideas

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Looking forward, it’s pretty clear that eventually our chainplates will need replacing. Crevice corrosion is almost impossible to stop, and is likely to lead to eventual failure. Whether that is one year from now, or twenty is not clear. We still have nine more chainplates to pull – the first three showed modest corrosion. What if we pull one and it’s in terrible shape??

Analysis of the “hairpin” chainplate design

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A few comments on the “hairpin” chain plate design on the Nic 38.  Looking at this as an engineer (well, actually I’m a physicist), there are some interesting design decisions that were made.  Basically, I think it’s a brilliant design with multiple redundancies built in.