The start of a Six – part 3

Month three – keel plug and resin infusion

In January 2022 work started on a brand new Six Metre at Red Sky Yachts in Kotka, Finland. The new boat, named “Oiva”, has been designed by Allan Savolainen, with the project being overseen by Chris Winter. She is being built for Six Metre sailor Henrik Andersin. It is hoped she will be ready to compete at the European Championships in Cascais in September 2022.

This is our third monthly update on the progress of the build. Over the last month Red Sky have been working on developing Oiva’s keel. The wooden plug has been CNC machine cut, the machine working overnight to make a perfectly symmetrical and detailed form. The final plug will then be used to make a sand mould to cast the lead in.

Elsewhere in the workshop, the hull and deck have been moved to a final assembly room in preparation for resin infusion. The hull had a supporting exoskeleton built around it to assure symmetry during the infusion process.

For infusion, all the cloth layers are put in place to take advantage of fiber orientations and “spray glued” to keep parts from moving. The infusion process itself allows for very accurate control of the resin amounts sucked into the fiberglass layers in the hull interior.

The team are now at a stage now where the hull and deck can be weighed independently to assure that the build meets the class requirements for panel weights.

Click on the images below to see Oiva’s progress in April. The image captions have been provided by Henrik and Chris.