The Oddity Blog

14th March 2022

Sail Plan

Thats the sail designed. Alan Harris of Sail Shape has a lot to do from sails to cushions, Lee Cloths and dodger with bimini

11th March 2022

Looking forward

Once the cushions are in it will all come together.

10th March 2022

Below

As you can see we are moving forward below. Really pleased with the light open and cheery space.

9th March 2022

SAILS

Once the standing rigging was made up and secured we were able to rig up the boom and gaff. I've never had a gaff rig before which made it all the more interesting. The reason for a gaff rig is to ensure that all the spars are within the boat length when we morph Oddity into a canal boat. It was nice to be able stand back and change the gaff angle until it pleased the eye. Once we went firm it was time to measure up for the sails. The mainsail goes into production today and it looks like we shall have everything from sails to dodger, bimini and cushions ready for hitting the water end of April. I'm so glad that we bought the cloth well ahead of the game to avoid supply issues.

8th March 2022

The Big Crimper

Alan's van is an aladins cave when it comes to rigging. Out came a drum of rigging wire, up went the mast to measure rigging lengths and the furler was laid out on the grass for assembly. Once again it was lovely to be an integral part of the process for it helps build up the knowledge bank for future reference. The picture is a terminal being crimped, pressed or some other technical description for attaching it to the wire. Its thirty tons compression and needs to be run through twice to acheive the required reduction in diameter.