The front beam was one of our major fun bits to build.
The inner tube had been built long ago on a mold that we had built right in the beginning of this project when we were building the decks.
It all started with cleaning the inner tube and fixing it into frames. By the way, it's supposed to be curved, it's not hanging.
05.10. ready to start
It takes lots of Carbon layers to turn this tube into a front beam. To put these layers on bubble free and well compressed vacuum bagging was necessary. As we had neither pumps nor experience doing this Chris, a real boat builder, came to help us. The plan was to put the layers on in 3 or 4 days to avoid that the tube bends down under the weight or that the epoxy goes hard before the pumps run fine.
First all went fine.
05.10.
the first layers
Once the layers for the day were on and the pumps were switched on, we just needed to hunt a few leaks
05.10.
leak hunting
and the pressure was what it what it was supposed to be.
05.10.
pressure
The epoxy started to appear in the bleeder cloth
05.10.
bleeder
and all seemed fine. But then we got our dose of hectic as the beam went a bit flat...... what had happened? The beam was partitioned with little bulkheads to stiffen up the inner tube. apparently these built up compartments that were airtight to the beam side opening, but the pumps could still get air out through all the glass layers, so these compartments started to collapse.
Drilling a hole into the little bulkheads from the end opening of the beam solved the problem and the beam came back into shape... we should have known better.
The next two days all went without stress.
Then we built the pelican striker
23.10.
pelican striker
and the chain plate for the fore stay,
23.10.
chain plate
all under the attentive eyes of a friend, sitting idle on the window sill (they can really make you jealous sometimes)
23.10.
friend
The last bit to go on was the wire over the pelican striker, built up from carbon fiber just like the rest,
16.11.
'wire'
and then, after fairing and sanding and fairing and sanding and fairing and sanding it could finally go up
15.12.
ready to go
The little tube in the front will be used for fixing the trampoline.
15.12.
fits
and with the second try it even fitted:
15.12.
bow
16.12.
from below