Tag Archives: marblehead blog

Race Report Sunday 1st October – Marbleheads …!!

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Well done to Craig at the A Class Nationals!

At Datchet today we had 6 Marbleheads including Richard Jones’s brand new F-6.  Some of us expected to be in B or C1 rigs, instead it was A swing rigs, however the direction was sort of SSW with enough shits to make life interesting.  We managed 10 races and the results were;
1st Richard U with 14 pts
2nd Hugh 15 pts was plagued with rig failure
3rd Graham 23 pts
4th Richard J 27 pts new boat nerves?
5th Les 30 pts
6th Phil 46 pts damaged sheet post and two attempts at temporary fixes failed.
Richard with his Quark beat the later designs of F-5 and F-6s

As a heads up, the Ten Rater Rankings for next weekend have been cancelled.  So it will be Club Racing with Tens on Saturday and IOMs on Sunday

(Photos by kind permission of EH)

Plans to Make a Wooden IOM Stand

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If you fancy building your own boat stand in wood, here are a couple of plans you might follow. It would be pretty economical route, so long as you have basic woodwork skills.

I’ve been using a wooden stand (maybe from these plans) on an IOM loan boat. There is something very satisfying about it.

The one extra thing I would suggest you consider is adapting the design so accommodate the next Class size up, (eg Marblehead), and also the next Class size down (eg DF95, RG65 etc). If you replace the keel support bar with a sheet of marine ply, so that all the fin lengths are covered… you get a universal stand!

Take a look at these two (very similar):-

http://nmsclub.org/boat-cradle

https://tomndi.blogspot.com/2015/04/rc-sailing-folding-wood-boat-stand-iom.html

Lipo and Life Batteries – So What’s That About …?!

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If you’re just coming in to radio sailing, it’ll be about two hours before somebody mentions LiFe and LiPo batteries to you in the cafe! Baffling.

Well, there is a bit of a debate to say the least.

https://www.large.net/news/8eu43mr.html

This link above is quite a good description of what is at hand. I am still trying to nett it out, but I think it comes down to:-

  • LiPo batteries are a fire risk (gulp), but perform better apparently
  • LiFe batteries weigh a touch more for equivalent power/life/durability
  • RW says that LiPo can deliver different winch power on a surge.

My new IOM arrived with LiPo’s. They are definitely of the 2-cell variety. I notice also they come with a fire proof pouch!!

So I thought,…. use LiFe in the IOM and work within permitted minimum weights… but in the Marblehead use LiPo’s as we are mad about weight saving as there is no minimum weight rule.

Then I thought I would pop them on the scales and find out…..

The red battery is LiPo and the blue is LiFe… 92gms and 49.6gms respectively….NOT what I expected! There is obviously a physical size difference to consider when you buy!! By the way, I find you need a different charger (or a sophisticated universal charger) for LiFe batteries.