3 years after the team recovered Ester's sunken hull from the sea bed, she has emerged from the hangar looking shiny and sleek. Laurence and Jean-Michel have joined Bo and Yohannes in the final tasks that remain before Ester is relaunched in Sweden for sea trials. Leif Wikberg has made a short film documenting the recent activities. https://vimeo.com/343868437 …
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Spar Building
images courtesy of Leif Wikberg In the Autumn of 2018 we planned out the joints in the staves of the sitka spruce mast and the douglas fir boom. Both of these spars required 8 staves with one or two joints per stave. We used long 1:12 scarph joints to maintain the strength of the timber. spar planning By February we had glued up the staves and started setting up the spindle moulder to cut the tapered bevels onto the staves. A spreadsheet was useful to verify the geometry and the size of …
Varnish
The team have worked for most of the winter on the finish above the waterline and painting the hull under the waterline. Akzo Nobel advise sanding bare wood to 120 grit finish before priming for varnish. The topsides, above the water and below the deck, have been carefully sanded with Mirka vacuum assisted longboards and hand shaped longboards. The deck is very long and flat with 100mm camber (across the deck) and 160mm sheer (curvature front to back). We have used Akzo Nobel Primer J7809 …
Interview with Laurence Rames
Laurence Rames is to skipper Ester when she is officially launched in Monaco this summer of 2019. Please see the video interview made by Leif Wikberg. laurence_intervju_2 from Leif Wikberg on Vimeo. …
Closing the Deck
Ester’s deck is made of 16mm mahogany. We’ve measured what was left of the original deck and looked at marks on the remaining components that give us an indication of the original thickness and copied that. This is quite thin for 50’ deck and does not offer a great deal of rigidity. For this reason, the deck beams are placed every 250mm and are supported by the diagonal bracing (fakverk) previously written about. Many thanks to Leif Wikberg for the gallery below. The boards used for …
The Keel
Ester is keeping her original fin keel. It is made from an iron fin with a lead bulb, presumably cast onto the bottom of the iron fin. The plate that makes this 'fin' is then bolted into a pair of stainless angle irons, fitted to the hull. The pair of angle irons is bolted through to oak floor timbers that span the flatter sections of the boat. The bolts used to fasten the plate to the angle irons were made for Ester. A special drill was also made for the rebated holes. Thanks to …