Building (and sailing) a Golant Gaffer: December 2016

Happy Christmas to our followers. Those of you who have been following this story will know that it was Christmas day two years ago when we decided that we would commit to building our boat. That two years has been hard work but also enthralling, challenging and educational.

When we started all this business I wondered in what way I could contribute best to the building of our boat - I am not much of a carpenter but wanted to do a bit more than choose the colour of the berth cushions (!). Consequently I decided that running and standing rigging would be my contribution (over and above the financing of the project). I am pretty handy with string but knew that this would be an interesting way of getting more familiar with the processes of fully rigging a boat. Consequently I set up a list of what I thought I would need and heck, there is a lot of it. In fact it's not often we sit back on our boats and count up all the bits you need to for rigging. OK where, to start ? Well 100m of 8mm Marlow braid for halyards and bobstay tackle. This then set me off on how to put eye splices in braided rope - well there is an excellent video on Marlow ropes site where the bloke makes it look all so easy...... Well I maybe didn't expect the first one to go easily and sure enough it didn't but I learnt from it and tried again. The result I was rather pleased with so went forth to do the next one, which I wasn't.

The whole things appears to revolve around how much slack you can get into the outer cover in order to allow for the thinned down core and cover to get back down inside and I really have no insight into why one has worked and the next didn't - It's the same rope......The problem is that I need nearly all my 100m for the halyards and every duff splice get cut off - need to crack this asap..And I have paused in this blog to have another go and have had some reasonable success in creating a small eye splice and finishing it with some whipping. I have also been whipping the three stand mooring warps and splicing the fender lines.

Now those of you paying attention will know I left a cliff hanger in the last post whereby I eluded to rigging her in a slightly different way, well following various discussion with riggers and rope companies, we are going to have a crack at using Dynastay for the standing rigging. Dynastay is incredibly tough 12 braid hollow rope with low stretch and minimal creep. It is easily spliced and very lightweight. It has the advantage of being able to examine the fibres for wear and is easy to handle and store. Shrouds will have sailmakers thimbles spliced in and then be lashed. Consequently Santa has bought me a load of 5mm Dynastay and a set of Selma fids (below) so I will be splicing my way into the New Year.

What about chafe ? I hear you say. That is dealt with by protecting and areas prone to wear with the outer braided jacket of a piece of braid on braid and then whipping it into place. From what I can gather there are a few gaff rigged boats done this way - one belonging to a rigger so it can't be all bad and whilst it is not mainstream in the UK and the Dynastay is not stocked widely, we decided it was worth a go.

I will let you know how I get on when I've made some up.

And the rest of the boat ? Well, the two layers of ply for the cabin top have gone on with the hatch runners and grab handles. the companion way is built and the surround for the forehatch. Also D has been lovingly crafting the rear posts that sit as aft stanchion posts in the rear corners of the cockpit. They are a puzzle of weird angles and are best left to D who has that kind of brain.

Also, earlier in December we had a productive trip up to the East Coast to collect the trailer and to talk to the sailmaker.

Photos below.

Grab rails