Hardware and folding system, a retrospective story

After post curing the mast, by the way I achieved 45 deg C for 40 hours or so - not as much as I hoped for but hopefully better than nothing - I had to start assembling the boat.  We are southbound for our holidays and it was necessary to bring the boat down for sail fitting if any sailing is going to take place this summer.



The main hull was placed in the garden for fitting.  I bought a tent but didn't find the time to put it up, so some working was done in the typical rainy and cold summer weather. Here the pulpit and hatches are mounted, and clearly the lexan windows are fitted.

I ordered all the metal parts for the boat some three years ago at a local workshop.  They are doing a very good job but at a tremendously slow rate.  After lots of visits and calls I finally got the aluminium anodized and the last steel and titanium parts made the same weekend I was going to travel south.  Hence, quite hectic assembly.  I have also not been good at taking pictures of the process.  I was very lucky that Silas stayed for a couple of days helping me with this.

Folding system being assembled.  Workers in all sizes taking part in the process.

So, fitting the folding system.  I have been very cautious to follow the plans exactly, and so I did with this assembly.  After fitting the bolt backing plates and the compression pads, the beams were connected to the boat via the upper folding struts and final alignment was about to start.  Then we discovered that neither of the beams could be set remotely in the correct position.  The first thought was that the upper folding struts were not made according to plans (the first set weren't, as the holes were 3mm too big for the bushings), but this turned out to be correct this time.  So we had to go on and shorten the inner ends of the beams quite a bit (6-8 mm I guess) and we finally was able to move the beams in to the correct position.  When swinging the lower folding struts to the hull at this stage they all fitted perfectly central and even on the hull recesses.  We bolted the brackets to the hull and was very anxious to test the folding system.  That is when we discovered we had a Farrier non folding trimaran.

Further trimming of the beam inner ends corrected this, as seen outlined on one forward beam here, this was only restricted by the window.

When we finally got all beams sufficiently cut back, all beams folded flawlessly.  As a bonus, all four beam bolts were fitted quite easily without having to modify anything.  The thrill is now if this still fits after adding the last beam end pieces and trimming the compression pads......

Then fitting the floats to the beams.  This was not difficult, especially not when we did it like this picture shows, with the float upright and the beams partially folded.

A series of four shots showing Silas testing the unfolding ability of the port float.  One finger start of the motion

Two hands but still smiling

allmost there

Bolting the aft beam down

Port float folded and strapped to the trailer, boat steady for attaching starboard float.