Brightlingsea One Design

With C54 now only days away from launching, its the turn of James Anderson’s C55 to undergo the Simon Hipkin fit out treatment.  The hull and tank mouldings were moved from White’s to Simon’s yard recently and Simon is already making great progress.

James went over the yard to see for himself how things are going and sends us the following photos.  He also report that Simon is taking a slightly different approach to fitting out this boat as he plans to complete as much of the interior work as possible before fitting the decks, as he found on Alan’s boat that having the decks in situ made some jobs more tricky.  They are still on target to have the boat in the water in good time for Pyefleet Week.

Alan Hicks invites you to celebrate the launch of Brightlingsea One Design (BOD) C54 Storm Petrel at 2.30pm on Saturday 19th April (Easter Saturday) 2014 at The Hard, Brightlingsea, Essex.

Storm Petrel is the first new BOD to be built in several years and is number one in a series of four new boats that will be launched during the coming year, a year which will also see several more restored BODs return to racing.

As well as an opportunity to inspect Storm Petrel guests will be able to meet representatives of the BOD Class Association and the builders and key suppliers involved in Storm Petrel’s construction including Rob White of White Formula, Simon Hipkin Boatbuilder, and representatives of Sailspar and One Sails. BOD restorer Rob Maloney will also be on hand to talk about his current restoration projects, along with Malcolm Goodwin whose personal commitment to the survival of the BOD has been the driving force behind the class’s revival success.

Weather permitting several other BODs will be joining Alan for his inaugural sail and any guests or members of the press keen to try sailing a BOD will be welcome to step aboard for a short trip around the bay. To RSVP and reserve a sailing place please e-mail fiona.brown@fionabrown.com

The eagle eyed among you may have noticed that we’ve just updated the number of boats in build in the side panel to the right to 4.  This is because in addition to C54 (Alan Hicks) and C55 (James Anderson), which are currently nearing completion, White Formula has confirmed that two further boats will go into production later this year.  One is being built for a client whose details we hope to be able to bring you shortly and the other will be for a “stock” boat.

Stand by for more news on these boats as we get it and for a formal invitation to the launching of C54 on Saturday 19th April which will be coming your way shortly!

Both Brightlingsea Sailing Club and the Colne Yacht Club have now published their full sailing programmes for the year.  Click here to view the BOD and club programmes.

The sun and warm weather has brought everyone out of the woodwork and Park and Ride has been a hive of new BOD activity over the past couple of days. On Friday Alan Hicks and Craig Bond spent the day fitting the rig for Alan’s new boat C54.

And on Saturday James Anderson’s new C55 made her first appearance out of the mould as she prepares to transfer to Simon Hipkin ready to have her joinery fitted. As you can see from the images below she is a lovely smokey blue colour with a white bottom and her tanks and main bulkhead have already been fitted by Rob.

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Rumours also reach us that C56 will go into construction shortly and that C57 will follow hard on her heels! More info will follow on these as soon as we can get details.

One of our highly trained under cover reporting team has just sent me the following snap shot demonstrating the excellent use our illustrious Fleet Captain Mr Richardson and his crew make of Panic during the winter season, when she becomes their official home brew bar. Certainly the boat looks very at home all snugged up on straw bails, and the aft deck has plenty of room to handle the beer barrel, glasses and obligatory snacks. It strikes us this could be the start of an occasional series featuring 101 uses for a BOD – all contributions (ideally with photographic evidence) to fiona.brown@fionabrown.com

It’s always lovely to find out how people came to be partnered with their BODs and the story of Richard Austin and C44 Janice is a particularly nice one.

Richard originally registered at the BOD website because he was researching the fate of C44.  The original owner Joe Overton was a good family friend and business associate of Richard’s father back in the early 1950s.  Richard learnt to sail in West Mersea in the late 50s with the Overton family and has been messing about in boats on and off ever since.

When Joe Overton moved up to racing bigger boats, Richard’s father purchased C44 and owned her for several years.  Richard lost track of her when he went off to sail Enterprises and later Hornets at Burnham.  But the lure of the BOD is strong and like so many of us he found himself wondering what had happened to that early love who had given him so much but then disappeared from his life.

It was when Rob Maloney asked us to place an advert announcing that C44 Janice was for sale for restoration that a match was made in heaven.  As soon as the news update bounced into his inbox Richard was on the phone to Rob and a deal was struck.  Restoration will start on the boat this summer and we can expect to see her out on the water for the 2015 season.

In the meantime Richard is very keen to do some crewing in BODs to familiarise himself with the boats, pick up a few tips for the refit and learn about our sailing area so he is ready to race next year.  If you are ever looking for crew do please give Richard a shout on r.austin144@btinternet.com.

We’ll keep you posted on the restoration once its underway and we look forward to welcoming Richard and C44 Janice to the fleet next year.

As part of our series tracking the construction of C54 for Alan Hicks, this week we’ve got an update from Mark White who has just completed the fairing and finishing of the centreboard for the new boat.  Mark has kindly sent us the following notes and photos to help us understand what goes into preparing a new board.

Pic No 1 shows the board as it arrived with an oxidising primer added after casting, the leading edge was a 1 cm flat in places on the leading edge, so I had to grind this to shape and coated the bare metal with vinyl ester resin.

Pic 2, I applied a 300g csm (chopped strand mat)around this so I could build up the edge and that also helps with future knocks that can be repaired easily.

Pic 3 Specialised vinyl ester coating applied as a natural coating, this helps identify low and hi areas of the board.

Pic 4 & 5 show vinyl ester putty that’s been applied and sanding & shaping that has been completed.

Pic 6 shows another layer of specialized vinyl ester coating that is applied to the board for final faring.

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This final series pictures shows the board in its finished state after a series of compounding to a smooth polished state.

Our roving reporter snuck into White’s on Monday to find that all the moulding work on C55 is now complete, her tanks have been fitted and she is now sitting in the mould ready for transportation to Simon Hipkin for the woodworking phase of construction to begin.

A quick catch up with owner James Anderson at the big lift in Wivenhoe confirmed that construction is well on schedule, all the fittings and gear have been specified and ordered and he still expects to be out on the water in good time for Pyefleet Week.

As soon as the boat is moved to Simon’s and out of the mould we will bring you some update pictures of her so stand by for more news in a couple of weeks.

We had a great turnout for the lifting operation to move Cormorant from the lower to upper workshop on Sunday so thanks to everyone who was able to come and help.  Malcolm got everyone briefed and organised and the lift went extremely well as you can see from the video below!

Now she is upstairs Malcom will be hard at work getting her painted and fitted out.  Next up in the downstairs workshop Rob is finishing a refit on a Wivenhoe One Design and then he will move onto the restoration of Janice.

The team pay close attention to Malcom’s briefing.