After a year of hard battling, the Erin desperately needed a refit. Originally scheduled for the 2010 - 211 winter, it got delayed due to moving to a new house in a new state for a new job. The low-riding Erin took some brutal damage to the casements. At the Tangler at Engler, Johnny's Baden actually blew out a 1/4" thick aircraft ply inpenetrable area. It definately needed some work! First, got to fix that casement deck stringer. I had some 1/8" x 1/16" carbon fiber strips available so used the very handy multifunction tool to trim the stringer back 1/16". The CF was attached using E-6000. By the way, the E-6000 adhesive is now my favorite glue behind CA. E-6000 has an amazingly strong yet flexible bond. Next was the casement cupolas and the 1/8" casement pieces. At first, the goal was to replace the parts that got blown out at the Tangler, but as work progressed I kept finding more and more damage. After it is all said and done, all the cupolas and old broken sticks were replaced. Ever since this year's Brouhaha where I saw how well the Iron Dukes were turning with thier rudder shapes, I've been wanting to make new rudders for the Erin. So out came the graph paper, calculator, and a quick check of the rudder rules for class 4 ships in MWC. The first drafted rudder drawing looked too big compared to the Erin's original rudders, so the numbers were checked and rechecked and rechecked yet again with the same result. Finally, I checked the original rudders and discovered that somehow they had been made a .25 square inches too small! The result is the picture below showing the correct size rudders for a class 4 ship. No wonder Don Cole mentioned the rudders looked too small at the Brouhaha! So the goal is to finish fixing the left side casements today and start work on the ship's interior this week. Also on the schedule is new pump housings for the Erin and Verite.
