When discussing with a friend the maintenance tasks I had in front of me this winter, I was recommended to consider using a 'Fein Multimaster' for some of it.

I had to :-  1. make accurate cuts into gel coat,   2. cut through solid resin and thick GRP,     3. cut accross a 20mm marine ply bulkhead and to cut through hardwood timbers some 40X40mm etc..

My fears were that I was going to have difficulty in getting accurate cuts in very difficult places in safety.

I am now the proud owner of the Multimaster.   Many of my fears have been allayed and so far everything is being done so much easier and quicker than I had thought possible.

Not cheap, either for the main power tool 110 or 240Volt  or for the cutters and attachments but I have found it well worth the money.  The multimaster has oscilating cutters not rotating ones with a huge range of blades, cutters and attachments.  

Have a look on  http://www.fein.de/fein-multimaster/uk/en/media/multimaster_video.php?vidname=muma_01

Sounds like a bow thruster?

Phil

Just watched the video-yes that looks like a very interesting piece of kit-that you can cut into a thick surface from the top is very clever-the only other device that comes close are circular hole cutters-great if you mant a circular hole of any size.Also like the way you can cut rebates.

Phil

See  blog 'Boatbuilders of '60's/'70' s to see what it's all about.

Scotty.

Hi Cathy – all can be revealed.

As I sailed back from Aldernay at the end of last summer i noticed a slight crack in the GRP saloon roof alongside my maststep.  After having unseen water ingress, (over many years I guess), via the bolts which hold the maststep down to the GRP pad on top of the saloon on my Twister, rot had taken place in supportive timbers below.  Not a problem usually associated with Twisters.

Work done :-

* Routered out a lid from the GRP maststep pad and with the Fein Mulimaster, took out the infill of 30mm of soggy ply.

* Refilled the space with 5mm and 10mm sheets of polyester from a local catamaran builders, (the bits they cut out for the windows), and epoxied them back to the correct level with a couple of steel bars along its length to give more strength.

* Took out three supporting ash crossbeams with the Multimaster, one of which had nearly rotted through, (+ the top of two bulkheads below), and the upright posts with the Multimaster, which take the masts forces down to the keel area. Ash is not a good timber for this job.

* Remade the 60mm thick beams from well seasoned European oak, made up of 12 lamins/plys of 7mm thick each, in a gentle ark shape to match the cabin roof inside. How many tons is this now capable of supporting I wonder?    I glued up the lamins for the beams onto a former, which was made using the old beams as a pattern, with 5min polyurethane glue using nylon nails in a nail gun. When put through a thicknesser and finished off the new beams were bonded back up to the inside of the cabin roof with epoxy mixed with microfibres.

* Put in new Utile support posts bonded to the bulkheads with 5min polyurethane, setting each post up into a housing joint in the beams and setting the bottoms of the posts down to strong areas at the keel.

* Replaced the through bolts for the maststep with studs epoxied in to stop water ingress. No real force need to be applied to the holding nuts as the weight of the mast etc will hold it all down.

* Reset the newly galvanised steel maststep back onto its pad with oil based builders mastic to ensure the load was well spread accross all of my new mastep pad. (Chose this type of mastic as it can be easily wiped off and cleaned up with white spirit.)

* Refilled some of the interior GRP moulding with car body filler and sanded to shape.

* Along with removing and refitting the front hatch, refitting the genoa tracks, and the other normal winter maintenance, I havn’t had time to fit my boat heater which was to have been the main task this lay up. All could have been done and finished in a week or so if the boat had been alongside a workshop, but at weekends with winter weather, flu bugs and being 80miles from the yard it made things a bit slower.   The Multimaster enabled the work to be done far more easily and quickly however and I dread to think how I would have achieved most of the tasks without it and how long it could have taken.

* Just the ‘decorating’ to do now and oh! I forgot, I've just started to take the forecabin apart to sort out the lockers and....................     Scotty.

Wow, that's an impressive achievement. I've always thought how lucky we are to be just six miles from the boat, ashore or afloat. It means you can always nip home for the vital thing you have forgotten!

It may be no consolation, and not something you even want to think about, but you can always fit that heater after you have launched!

Most deck stepped masts seem to cause problems at some point in their lives, (our Sigma had three new deck plates in the time we owned her, and the coachroof had to be beefed up when she was far younger than your Twister) but at least now you can be confident that everything is properly ship-shape.

Have you got some exciting sailing plans for the season, to repay all the effort you have put in over the winter?

Hi Cathy, main sailing plan is to get a lot of offshore miles in. 4 of us over 60's are sailing a Nicholson 38 ketch straight down to Spain in June. Some of us are thinking of onwards and upwards as far as RYA courses go. We all fancied going to the Azores and staying there for a couple of weeks, but work commitments mean that we may have to do that in a year or two's time. 

I have mentioned somewhere before on Mainsail, that the Nic' 38 is a wolf in sheeps clothing. The hull, a long keeler, and general design came from the USA and were originally intended to be a motorsailer. Later they were made by Nicholsons, as they turned out to be an extremely good 'sailboat' in their own right. The one advantage for cruising in a ketch like this, is that you can have a large amount of rag in your sail wardrobe, so the variety and choice is as big as your wallet and conditions on the day. 

This should then set me up for the season content with a few picnics with wife and friends and a few solo trips here and there from the Portsmouth area as my base.

How about you Cathy and others out there, what are your main plans for the year? ...Scotty