Tupps.com
The following are the ramblings of Luke Tupper
Whether it is sailing, cycling, running, photography or other activities that Luke is involved in this is the place to read about them.
Photos of Dad’s Boat ‘The Toad’
While I have put a number of photos of rebuilding and repairing Dad’s boat, I haven’t put any photos up of the finished boat. Unfortunately it would probably have been better to take these photos before breaking the mast and punching a hole in the deck.
I took a liberty with name of the boat. Dad originally had called it ‘Prince Toad’, with a view of naming his next boat ‘King Toad’ or some such. I simplified on just ‘The Toad’.
The toad logo was from Dad’s business. I vectorised the logo and the guys from Graphic Effects made the logo. They did the work on the back of the boat as well.
The cockpit was painted due to the amount of damage that had been sustained over the years, plus the new foam floor, didn’t lend itself well to varnish.
The signage and logo on the sail were done by Dad.
M&M Store
The store has 3 floors of M&M merchandise and of course some M&Ms.
Inside the Store
Liberty M
Elvis M
Inside the store
What merchandise you ask? Well anything is possible:
Need an M&M Golf Ball, or maybe Golf Club Cover?
M&M Monopoly
M&M Ron Lee Collectible ($2100)
Sexy M?
Of course it wouldn’t be the M&M store unless you could buy M&Ms:
World's Biggest Wall of Chocolate
M&M Medicine Box
Choose your flavor
Speciality Mixes
Strawberried Peanut Butter?
More M&M Wal
22 Colors!
Touchdown Mix (NY Jets Colors)
More Colors
Make your own color mix
Valentines Day Mix
Thanksgiving Mix, or should this be Hawks Mix?
Putting the toad back together
After the trouble on the 25th, ‘The Toad’ needed to be put back together again. Of course the obvious initial solution would be to stick a piece of tape over the hole and keep sailing. However that solution would persist for some time until the boat was brought home. Seeing I needed the trailer to get the mast to and from the club I decided to bring the boat home as well.
The hole hadn’t damaged any of the structural parts of the boat, but had come very close.
If you look through the hole in the above photo (the straight mark is a cut I had already made). Just behind the back of the hole is a small support beam that supports the mast step. The first step was to neaten up the hole. I did this by cutting up the hole square.
Unfortunately I was unable to leave any of the existing wood alongside the mast step. The mast step is supported underneath by several structural support and doesn’t gain any strength from the plywood next to it.
To support the new piece of wood in the boat I cut a supporting piece of marine ply to be placed behind the hole to support the new piece in the deck. This was epoxied into place. With the colder weather I used the West System with the fast hardener. Due to the colder weather I had the place a work light nearby to allow the epoxy to harden properly.
Note the arrows showing which way the piece should fit into the hole. This is important when you are in the process of gluing and clamping the piece. You don’t want to be worrying about which way things need to go when everything is covered in epoxy.
One worry when clamping the support into the boat was that the epoxy would squeeze out and permanently attach the clamp to the boat. Luckily after a day I removed the clamp and it came out of the boat and the support piece stayed in the hole. Steve Dunn has noted that mistakes with epoxy can be rectified with a little bit of cautious heat from a heat gun. After a bit of heat the epoxy will soften and mistakes can be removed and re-glued.
With the support piece in place the new bit of deck could be cut out. I cut the new piece for the deck slightly large than was needed and then filed the sides down until it fitted snugly.
You can’t see it in the picture but again the piece has markings on the back to make sure the orientation is correct when gluing everything. In this case the piece had epoxy applied on the back and the support piece had epoxy applied as well. I don’t have pictures of the epoxying process as epoxy and cameras don’t mix!
Here the final piece is in place. There is a small gap around piece and this will be filled with bog.
Sailing on the 25th of April
Saturday’s sailing was quite windy. I figured that it was going to be a great day to shake the last of the troubles out of the boat. With the help of Gary Todd I got the rudder pintels back on tight, after they had been working loose against a misaligned support at the back of the boat.
There was a strong breeze from the north which allowed some hiking but you had to quick getting back into the boat. The first lap of the race went well, falling only a short way behind Steve Dunn, Dan Simpson and Paul Farrell. Again it seems my tacking was causing me problems, I should have spent more time concentrating on getting speed out of the boat.
Thanks to Simon Cassin for the photo
The second lap of the race I had fallen a little behind, getting caught out approaching the top mark. As I rounded the bottom gybe mark the wind started picking up. By the time I reached the mouth of the narrow the boat was flying and starting to get out of control going down wind. As I approach the entrance to the narrows I noticed that the forestay of the boat had gone quite slack. I assume that this was just the force from the wind pushing on the sail. The second time I looked moments later the forestay was extremely slack, and the mast came crashing down.
Thanks to Simon Cassin for the photo
The mast broke between the spreaders and he hound (where the stays attach to the mast). Surprisingly there wasn’t any stress points (rivets or holes) on the mast.
At the time I was happy that the mast didn’t put a hole in the deck as it came down. The pin that the impulse mast rotates on is notorious for putting holes in decks. Unfortunately as the boat was pushed in the wind the rotation arm put a hole in the deck next to the mast step.
Looks like there will be a bit of work to do on the boat!
Look at the details from everytrail I hit around 20km before the mast broke:
Sailing on the 25th of April at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
Supersprint Otway Ride
On Saturday the 28th I wasn’t sailing as there were some cars driving around the lake.
It transpires that I the Supersprint Otway & Ocean ride was this weekend.
It was a very early start, with me needing to get down to Torquay by 7:00AM. I left home just after 5:00AM, and had a pretty good run, arriving 15 minutes early.
At the start I was caught in bunches of slower riders, and took nearly an hour to get to the first stop 25 km into the race. After that I made sure I hooked up with groups of faster rides and my average speed rose quiet nicely. The descents were fantastic with broad sweeping corners and no cars.
After Lorne the course ‘levelled’ out undulating all the way back to Toquay. I was a fantastic day for a ride and the 25 degrees and no wind made it a joy. The other great thing was that there very few incidents on the day and most people were reasonably experienced, or they weren’t in front of me.
Supersprint Otways Ride at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
Racing on the 21st of March
This is the first strong northerly we have had at the lake for some time, and it is the second time I have had a good long sail in the boat in decent breeze. In essence it was a good shakedown of the boat. First up a few things structurally need work:
1) The bolts on the rudder need lock nuts and tightening.
2) The traveller cleat let go part way through a gybe, breaking the end of the traveller.
3) The trailers dodgy welding (mine) came apart.
4) I broke my sailing watch (well it was already sort of broken).
Before the beginning of the race one of the new toe straps came undone sending me out the boat backwards. Luckily I was able to retie the toe strap and continue on. It was definitely a day when you needed both toe straps.
The race started near the narrows, which had been blocked off by the footbridge for the Grand Prix. I got a good start, partly by starting a boat length in front of the impulse fleet. I know from times on the start boat that the majority of the impulse fleet nearly always starts a boat length behind the line. One day they will be on the line and catch me out.
The first beat was tricky with many shifts along the course. I played a conservative card going through the middle of the lake and then towards the road before heading towards the mark. A lift was often found between the island and the mark which was worth having a shot at, but during the first lap this didn’t play out. At the top mark I rounded in second place behind Paul.
The next issue was the second mark of the trapezoid course. I completely forgot about it, and if you look at the GPS track at about 2.5km I had to sail back a short distance to the mark. This cost me a couple of places in the race. At the moment I am concentrating in what is going on in the boat that my attention to what is going on outside of the boat is on auto pilot. If Paul hadn’t said anything I probably would have sailed in to the footbridge thinking I had to go down to St Kilda.
The rest of the race saw me slowly slip backwards in the fleet. Tacking in heavy winds is still hit and miss with the boat often stalling as I push the boat around to quickly. At the end of the race Silke and Don were getting close to me, but a stronger breeze saw both of them slip behind again.
Due to the F1 GP there is no sailing at the lake. I will be able to take my time in the next two weeks and work on getting all the bits and pieces sorted out for the boat and the trolley.
Summer Series Race 6
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Racing on the 14th of March
A very wild day with the wind. We started with a north easterly breeze. For the first 45 minutes we were sailing in extremely light, flukey winds everything less than 5 knots. After that a number of storm clouds rolled in, shifting the breeze to the west and bringing an average 10 knot breeze with a gusty breeze right as the change came through.
The start of the race saw me falling back through the fleet on the first beat. Again bad tacking and spending to much time concentrating on the boat instead of what was going on around me lost many places and saw me falling into the second half of the fleet as the regular gusts caused the fleet to split in two. The wind was very unpredictable, and people got lucky on some of the edges of the course.
The downwind leg saw a number of us bunched together, trading places as the light breeze blew. By this stage the gap between ourselves and the leading group was quite considerable. By the time we were just leaving the narrows the lead boats were already nearing the rounding mark in front of the rowing clubs. Dark clouds were rolling in and the committee boat had warned that 30 knot breezes were predicted with the start of the front.
As the wind rolled in I was leading the back of boats that had been split from the lead pack. As the front rolled in the breeze was switching from an easterly to a westerly breeze, but was extremely unsettled. The frequent shifts were an advantage to anyone paying close attention to their wind indicator. I picked the shift going around, and picked when to tack onto port, giving me a 10+ boat length gap. As the front hit it was a matter of trying to get as much out of the boat as possible, but the difference between gusts and lulls was extreme.
The back group was lucky that the front runners were disadvantaged that they had to tack to the mark in front of the rowing sheds. Being further back we could stay closer to the shore and reach all the way to the mark. The front group was made up of a number of lighter sailors who were now struggling in the heavier breeze.
The breeze steadied after the front, and was now pretty much a soldiers course around the marks. The one place that a tactical advantage could be made was behind the island.
In the picture I have shown to strategies for getting around the wind shadow at the back of the island. The blue ’straight through’ line is the most direct line but you are in the danger of getting caught out by the lack of wind directly behind the island. The green line skirts the main window shadow at the island and allows you to take a little bit more speed as you approach the island. The disadvantage of the green course is that you have to sail higher to the mark and risk having to tack as well. The blue line also has the advantage of getting an extra ‘power squirt’ from the wind that has been compressed by the island (black lines). There is a small distinct band of wind just as you come out from behind the island. To take advantage of this you must be ready to hike quickly and keep the boat flat, but it can pay off if you get it right.
So what is the right way, green or blue?? Of course ‘it depends’ is the answer. The stronger the wind, the deeper the wind shadow, and the more depth there is to the ‘black band’ of wind as you leave the shadow of the island. As a basic rule, in the stronger winds it pays off to go close to the wall near the road, and in lighter breeze it is possible to cut the corner and go closer to the island. During the race I made and loss ground going behind the island, personally I prefer to keep moving and go a little bit lower than most.
Racing on the 7th of March
Boat setup on the Impulse is going well. Probably the only thing left to do is replace the hiking straps. Will look at ordering Zhik straps in the next couple of weeks.
Area that needs the greatest work is my tacking. It is interfering with my upwind boat tactics. The focus on the technical aspects of the impulse is distracting me from my usual race tactics. In the next couple of week I hope to get more settled in the boat.
Trophy Race, 7th of March at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
Racing on the 21st of February
First day out in the Impulse. It was blowing quite strongly and it was going to be a good test of the boat.
The start was fairly good, starting a few slots down from the committee boat end with a little speed and was with the front of the fleet for the first couple of tacks. James mistook the course for being a port course and took me off the wrong side of the island, but this didn’t cost a lot time.
Poor tacking was the main problem. The impulse tacks very differently to the laser and I need a lot of practice tacking. Getting out in a race in 15 knots probably isn’t the best place to practice. The boat would stall coming out of the tacks, losing valuable time.
The rest of the course was fairly uneventful with a few lighter sailors getting away on the downwind leg. Unfortunately at the mark in front of the rowing the vang broke, and that was the end of the race. At least I know what one of the weak links on the boat is.
Here is the GPS log from the race:
Sailing 21st of February at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
GPS Log of Feb 14th
Here is the GPS log of the racing on Feb 14th. I have used everytrail.com to show the details. The full trip details are available on the Every Trail website.
14th of Feb Race
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