Day 113
Days remaining. 121

Float Test.
(flōt tĕst)
v
(1) A mechanical test to confirm the buoyancy of an assembly or construction.
(2) Naval Slang. To discard an unwanted item overboard. 'Ill give it a float test after sunset'

The municipal Model Yacht Pond at Woodbridge

The perfect spot for the Blackbird to first touch the water.

It might be an odd thing to do a static floatation test on a moth - I mean it's bound to float right?! But It's the sort of thing that keeps you awake at night.  The Blackbird has very low volume and hardly any of that is at the bow.  So finding a static waterline and giving yourself the assurance that before an expensive paint job and screwing on a load of fittings, and doing a load of splicing, that the thing is going to have enough freeboard to actually be able to sail has got to be a good idea... After all, we all start with them on the surface in pre take off and at times need to sail them in LR mode.

I had done heaps of maths to prove the total volume, integrating the section over and over and in the end I came up with almost exactly 222 litres, but an actual confirmation of that would be nice too!

The total sailing weight of the boat will be around 30kg and wetsuited up I'll be around 77.  So that makes a total of 107kg - using just about half of the available volume (and staying well inside the class rule on buoyancy of course)

So today's test was an important one as although it gave me a fairly meaningless waterline at 9kg, once I stepped aboard - ably assisted by Si Cox from Synergy Marine holding the wing bars to steady the beast, it gave me a very useful waterline at 84kg (9 + 75).  From here I can do some very simple extraction and get a waterline at 107  (current waterline x 127%). Which I am happy to say looks about half of the freeboard, which means everything is just about according to plan and maybe now I can get some sleep.

In other news, I am sort of sorry to say that I missed marking the exact halfway point in this project - which would have been 4 days ago. Ah well. What did I do 4 days ago? Errm well on Saturday I was in the kitchen building a moth!!

Gotta go - Tickets for Franz Ferdinand in So'ton tonight.. All work and no play, and it's not every day you put a new boat in the water - even if it was in the local model yacht pond!

D