The Supplex for the sails arrived (in a Tyvek bag, the other popular synthetic sail-making fabric). Traced the sail patterns from the paper temples with pencil and cut with scissors, leaving an extra margin all around. Then folded that extra margin over and glued with Liquid Stitch to make the outside seams. Used a nail to hammer the holes in. Welcome to Primitive Sail Making 101. Attached to the spars with my twisted white twist-ties. I might use the paint pen to mark lines later. Good enough for now.

Ballast planning time. The plan is to glue a 2 inch wide flat steel bar onto the bottom of the 2 inch wide keel, about six inches below the waterline. (And maybe add an adjustable front and back piece as needed to deal with trim issues.) Did a test gluing an 8 pound iron weight onto an oak board with the Marine Epoxy. That stuff in strong.

So I finally put the Beagle back into the bathtub to test how much ballast weight she'll actually need, now that most of her final weight is installed. Looks to be about six or seven pounds, centered slightly behind the main mast. Hope that's enough to keep her other 16 pounds from being too top heavy.

Ordered a 15 inch long steel flat bar weighing 6.39 pounds. The $11.00 shipping charge was about the same price as the steel itself lol.

Then disaster struck...

So on Sunday I took the Beagle outside to get some pictures. 18 mph winds. Full sails. DOWN GOES THE MAIN MAST!

My wife snapped the picture just as it started to go, a split second before I realized it. The Marine Epoxy with metal pins just wasn't enough to hold the mast in place under that much force.

Well, back to the drawing board.

Week 27