Saturday night pulling and grinding!

Another one from Kit I'm afraid - Jess is still sauntering around the French Alps with our four little boys. Tomorrow, Jonah and Ini (7 and 9) are going paragliding which has become a bit of a Lane family obsession. I, however, have had a much more down to earth weekend! I think I have mentioned the awesome 17 " feathering prop from Darglow, well, Jeremy and I tried it on today. It is awesome, but.... Our calculations for enlarging the aperture between the rudder skeg and the rudder were a bit optimistic as became clear when we slid the prop onto the shaft. The shaft itself is also a wee bit too long. So, this evening I have been pulling the shaft out of the Aquadrive (thrust bearing flexible coupling) in order to cut an inch or so off tomorrow - followed by rather a lot of grinding (see photo taken with my mobile). As my older brother, Simon, pointed out to his daughter 'boatbuilders love grinding' and it's true that I don't feel like I've had a truly productive day on the boat unless I have put on a decent layer of dust. Tomorrow, I hope to get the shaft and prop back in and the rudder skeg built back up and faired in so it looks just right.

The Taming of the Screw

If I'm honest, the science behind the fine tuning of propellers has always been a bit beyond me. I remember on our last boat Silurian there was a lot of cursing and filing down, refitting and more cursing to do with the propeller. This time, I'm determined to get my head around it a bit better and it seems the hybrid engine might provide that opportunity. One of the main things which put us off the hybrid engine in the beginning was that we understood (wrongly) that in order to generate electricity the propeller would need to be in a permanently fixed position thus slowing the boat down. This was immediately dismissed as a no-no, just not something a Rogers would willingly sign up to! After Graeme Hawksley's visit from Hybrid Marine it became apparent that we could actually fit a feathering prop (one that slips into a streamlined position when the boat is sailing forward) which could be forced into a generating position (non streamlined) when we wanted to generate electricity from the prop - ie not during a race. After a little research it seems that the prop for the job is an 18" Featherstream propeller made by a local company called Darglow Marine. The exciting news is that Darglow Marine are keen to use Calypso as a test bed for props working with hybrid engines - I can feel a deal more cursing, filing and refitting ahead! At least we'll have the experts helping us.