Our New Boat being Built!!! | Sailing Blog - Technical Hints and Tips - Sailing Television

Our New Boat being Built!!!

42 MouldsSheryl and I have just got back to the studio from the spring filming in Italy and this morning received some picture from the yard at Northshore where the new boat is being built! How exciting!!! I just had to share some of the images with you.

Here is the Hull mould. The boat is moulded then a bunch of structure is put in before the mould is removed. This is so the hull is strong before the mould is taken off. So the plant is putting in bulkheads and stringers (lengthwise stiffeners). These will all be glassed in place.

The hull mould you see is carefully cleaned and then waxed on the inside. Then the gelcoat is sprayed in. So, the first part of the boat to be built is, somewhat bizarrely, the gelcoat (like paint). Then fibreglass is applied to the gelcoat in layers according to the designers specification until the desired thickness has been reached. Then coring is applied where specified - in this case above the waterline. Then the grid of stiffeners and finally the bulkheads.

Mould2Northshore has two facilities. The one pictured here is in Havant, and here they do all the fibreglass moulding. Then the boat will be trucked a few miles around to the main workshop in Itchenor (South England Near Chichester). This is the main Northshore headquarters where they complete and also launch the boat.

In the moulding shop in Havant they are also making the small mouldings that will be the two heads. These are normally made as a single moulding since it means they are waterproof - just like a built-in shower stall in a house. So here they are fitting the forward head moulding in place!

Mould 3In the middle of the hull you can see a tall fibreglass structure. This is the keel casing. Since it is a lifting-keel boat the keel needs a place to retract into. But the keel will not be added until the boat has been trucked to Northshore in Itchenor.

Anyway, as you can imagine, Sheryl and I are VERY EXCITED about this. The new boat is a real thing!!

I will post more pictures as soon as they are available!

Cheers!!

Paul

Mould 4
This is the deck mould with the finished deck still on the mould.
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