Moulding shop

The moulding shop is divided into two main areas. In one of them all of the in-house moulding processes are carried out. In the other boats are completed to whatever stage the customer requires.

All hull moulding is now done outside of SAILSetc. Our IOM hulls are made by Al McMeekin using wet lay-up into female moulds in the traditional way. Hulls for Marblehead, Ten Rater and A Class are now made using pre-preg carbon by Reverie Ltd and all come to us with the deck, fin box and mast tube incorporated into the primary hull moulding.

Denis Astbury - craftsman

Denis adds the remaining structural parts to the hulls, adds the foils and ballast, the fittings and rc if required. Being responsible for the finishing work helps ensure the quality control process. Denis also does hull repairs and oversees the other moulding tasks carried out here.

Denis comes to us with a long history of radio yachting behind him having taken part in the 1986 Marblehead world championship in Fleetwood and placing 2^nd in the 1988 Marblehead junior world championship in Berlin. Since then he has had a varied career and has recently been making and selling IOM class boats in his former home Brazil. He won the 2007 Brazil IOM class championship and has been successful in the ULY class too.

Katherine Dos Santos Fernandes

Katherine is responsible for production of almost all the structural component parts that are added to our hulls. We also supply these parts, fins and rudders, for use in other manufacturers’ boats including SAILSetc designs made under license.

Katherine has degrees in costume interpretation and technical arts/special effects, a course which introduced her to working in glass and resin. From a sailing background she now spends her spare time promoting the samba culture in the UK and directs her own samba band, Boudica.

Moulding of component parts is usually done by compressing the reinforcement materials, which have been wetted out with epoxy resin, between carefully made 'matched moulds'. The result is a moulding of controlled thickness which has an extremely low resin/fibre ratio. The fibre/resin ratio is probably higher than most pre-preg laminates. We were intrigued to find that fin skins made from high modulus carbon pre-pregs gave a heavier and much less stiff fin than our own mouldings did.

The whole area is well heated and well ventilated. Hydraulic jacks and G-cramps are used for compressing the moulds and low temperature ovens are used to heat some of the moulds while curing.

Plans and patterns of a multitude of parts pose a storage problem and we store glass and carbon reinforcements next to their cutting bench in the clean area. 

All the boats built at SAILSetc have a builder’s label bonded onto the inside. It records the names of the people involved in the boat, the design name, the moulding number and the name of the person for whom it was built.