DY171 update... 2014 so far....

After being away for a little while DY171 is back on the water and sailing!

Its been a long time since I last posted but I'll try to keep this one as short as possible.

A quick update so far:

2013 season ended well with DY171 winning the Topsham summer series of weekend races.

While I was abroad during winter and spring my father looked after DY171 and her continuing renovation. During the offseason she was taken back to the west midlands where she had some major work undertaken at SP Boats.  Her hull was stripped back and a new coat of blue gelcoat applied, replacing the paint job by her previous owners. After all the old layers of paint were stripped back the original hull colour appeared to have been maroon, we decided to stick with light blue as we had grown accustom to it. A new forrad bulkhead was also installed as the old bulkhead was rotten. This was due in part to water entering the forrad buoyancy space through the hole for the bow sprit notch under the deck moulding. This space is now sealed however we have kept a buoyancy bag in the compartment for safety.

During the process of applying the new seasons coat of anti-foul we noticed that the hull had a small hole under the waterline. This looked to have been caused by incorrect roller alignment of the new trailer, yet another lesson learned the hard way! A temporary repair was applied in order to get her back on the water.

DY171 had her first sail of the season with 32 other yawls at the Devon Yawl National Championships. A disappointing first day with one race sailed in extremely light airs was very disheartening (especially as we had to carry such a poor result). Three races on the sunday in race worthy wind proved that DY171 has good boat speed up wind, we need to look at our down wind speed however. The first race on sunday gifted us a top ten result and the following two in the low teens. Here is some footage from the first race on Sunday (including GPS data)

After the nationals our hole under the waterline was repaired and we put DY171 back on her mooring (Thanks to swift repair by a great chap called Charlie and Some skilful van driving by Sam from Exe Sails!)

The next event we sailed was the Exe regatta where we had some good match racing with Ed W-H!
There are some great photos of DY171 and Y'ALL WHITE at the regatta taken by Jon Croome at this link

We are looking forward to the rest of the season!

Happy Sailing,

Rich