volvo ocean race updates twice a day on their youtube channel, & the short legs are pretty engaging, well, probably mostly team SCA is in the lead right now so I’m more interested than usually 🙂

• https://www.youtube.com/user/volvooceanracevideos
• http://www.bandgblog.com/volvooceanrace/mark-chisnell-leg-8-preview-a-tale-of-two-race-tracks/ I feel like we should hook up the “competitive weather forecasting” folks with the volvo ocean race, I’m sure they’d have a blast 🙂
• http://magicseaweed.com/US-Northeastern-Seaboard-Surf-Chart/20/
  (re: the domain name — hah!)

re: rudder construction, have not had a chance to sit down & upload/document/write-up everything,

but in brief —

Solid bronze inside. We did CNC foam on a shopboat, laid down fiberglass, the rudder post & pre-stressed the trailing rods[1] , closed the mold and poured 2-part foam-it! 15lb urethane foam, de-molded, three more glass layers to connect the two halves, then gelcoat, install, and antifoul coat.

We also have a nice 3d model of outside of our rudder now (and a renewed complaint list against solidworks):
https://github.com/nouyang/scienceboat/blob/master/boatrudder.STL

& the mold:

https://github.com/nouyang/scienceboat/blob/master/rudder-mold-bottom.STL

the details i left out are: we put so much “gelcoat” (just epoxy layers since our rudder is unlikely to be flexing a lot) on that it we lost clearance on the back edge (oops), so after installing we found it didn’t turn well put rather “popped” to rotate fully since it was catching where it rotated against the keel.

we sawed & scraped until we had clearance and now the rudder turns like a dream now (we can do a sweet 180 turn now) — it’s a little “less waterproof” on that backedge since we had to take off most of the gelcoat layers, but worst case seawater finds its way to the foam, which can sit in water for up to 2 yrs before deteriorating — realistically it has so much glass still that it should be fine.

also, my face/arms rash is still itchy 1 week from last exposure (which did not even involve mixing epoxy –I was just cleaning up). Do not f*** with mixed / uncured epoxy, folks, and also do NOT use acetone to wash epoxy off your skin.

i’m using dipenhydramine (over-athe-counter skin numbing agent) & seeing a dr. on wed, but for the record:

5: Do not under any circumstances use acetone to clean up. This is the very quickest way to become sensitised. The acetone will immediately remove any natural protective oils in your skin and take anything it has dissolved, that is ANYTHING it has dissolved straight into your body. If you are going to use acetone to clean up your skin, you may as well just grab yourself a syringe and wack the crap up your arm and be done with it because it is much the same deal.

(pt 1 points out the things we fixed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T47fLW1PscE)