Only a brief update this month folks, as I have been wrapped up with our youngest daughter Jenny and her fiancé Kieran’s pre-wedding arrangements and then the big day itself, where we all had the best of times over the August Bank Holiday. I trust you will all appreciate consequentially the build upon our jet hydroplane Longbow took something of a back seat and writing this blog with something of a hangover, I am probably best to keep this one short and sweet.
Nevertheless I did manage to make some progress this month upon the formation of the rear of the sponsons, the latter being the two floats upon each side of the boat, towards the front of the craft, upon which the craft is supported and in contact with the water whilst running at speed.
The most straightforward means by which to finish the rear of these sponsons is to continue the timber support battens past the end of the sponsons for a short distance and then to extend the curved top decking of the sponsons to match. An example of this can be seen upon the fastest boat in the world, Ken Warby’s Spirit of Australia as shown below:
An alternative and somewhat more complex manner in which to terminate the rear end of the sponson is to infill the void beneath the top decking and run this back down towards the lower area of the sponsons as a closed void. This was the manner in which the jet hydroplane that held the Outright world Water Speed Record prior to Spirit Of Australia, a craft called Hustler was built and again as shown in the following photograph.
Either means of finishing the end of the sponsons upon Longbow would be fine but the advantage in our case for undertaking them in the manner similar to Hustler is that it just provides a degree of additional static bouyancy to the craft with no other penalty than the time and effort needed to form this detail. For those of you who have followed the building of Longbow to date you will be aware that we like a challenge. For me it is where the fun in the build comes from and so I have set about constructing the rear of the sponsons in a manner similar to Hustler which I have always admired the look of as may be seen in the following photographs, which is currently a work in progress.
It’s a little fiddly to form as there are angles to cut in two directions but I am optimistic that we will get the necessary shape formed with a little time and care. I am currently working on just one side of the boat then prior to fixing it all together I will mirror copy each section for the other side.
So that’s it for this month folks – short and sweet as my focus was on the wedding and as soon as the happy couple consent for photos to go on social media I will post a couple up.