Brightlingsea One Design

Is anyone up for joining Fi Brown and the Grethe girls on an awfully big adventure to the South Coast for the Bosham Classic Dinghy Regatta which takes place on Chichester Harbour over the weekend of 6/7 September 2014?

The regatta is a great fun mix of racing, boat bimbling and comparing and general fun and games with lots of fantastic classic dinghies involved.  As you can see from the photos with this article there are a number of classic day boats already taking part (we have Chichester Harbour 18 footers, National 18s and a Sharpie in the pic) so it would be a great opportunity to showcase the BOD to a new audience.

Logistically we are developing a plan to shuttle boats down on the available road trailers.  Fi has confirmed she will take her boat down early and then her trailer can be used to shuttle one or two further boats.  The regatta venue is about 15 mins from Fi’s house on the south coast so she can help with organising accommodation, logistics, etc.

If you are interested in taking part please drop Fi a note at fiona.brown@fionabrown.com.

Further information about the event will be posted soon at www.boshamsailingclub.com and if you do Facebook check out the Bosham Sailing Club and Classic Dinghy Racing  which will carry info as well.  There is a local accommodation list here.

A quick catch up with one Mr R White, boat builder of our parish, at the weekend confirmed the brilliant news that there will be two new fibreglass boats built this winter!!!

No formal details yet but we do know that C55 is following hard on the heel’s of Alan Hicks’ new boat.  Rob tells me that they are just waiting for the moulds to come back to them (currently Alan’s boat is still in the mould while they finish fitting bulkheads/tanks, etc) and then they will be starting the next boat right away.

Stand by for more details as soon as we have them.  Go the BOD fleet and here’s to 25 boats at Pyefleet Week 2014!

There are some very big winds forecast for the second half of the weekend (see scary pressure chart at left) so don’t forget to check your covers/tie down straps/mooring lines to be on the safe side.  Hopefully the worst of it will go south of us but better to be safe than sorry.

The Rule Change Proposals to be discussed at the BODOA AGM on Sunday 8 December have now been added to the Agenda.

We’ve also created a new section to the website for the Owner’s Association where we will keep copies of the AGM minutes.

Here is the first update from Alan Hicks on the start of construction of his beautiful new boat C54.  As you will see from the photos below Rob White’s team have finished the laminating of the hull and the boat has been moved to Simon at Thorpe for the templating for the side and forward buoyancy tanks.  Alan tells us that Malcolm kindly brought over the templates he made while fitting out White Spirit and there was much discussion about the best way to fit them with Rob making some very helpful contributions to the discussions.

The centreplate is currently being forged at East Coast Castings and should be completed in the next week or so. Much time has been spent by Alan thinking over fittings, etc, using copies of plans to make life easier later.  The big things to finalise and order over the next two weeks are mast, spars and sails.

Clearly progress is very quick with the construction so everything looks good for a launch in spring 2014.  We’ll bring you more updates soon and thanks to Alan for sharing the photos below and for keeping us update on progress.

The mould being prepared (the waterline is showing as the pink line)

The gelcoat goes on (we love the pale green colour!)

The glass layers going on

The boat goes to Simon who is making the patterns for the side and rear buoyancy tanks.

Thanks to http://www.tb4e.com for this great bit of video

Earlier today we posted an update about this Sunday’s Osborne Cup 2 (29 Sept) which is published in the BOD programme as being at 14.10 from BSC.  In fact the BSC are running morning racing on Sunday and the correct start time is going to be a little after 11.00am.  We will be added to the BSC start sequence so please check at the club for an exact start time.  Apologise for confusion.