New Kicker for Bubble
Today I went to the club to race, but I ended up sorting out Bubble instead. I was late for the first race, so I thought I would sort out the rigging and it took longer than expected, so I didn’t race.
This week I got a new XD Kicker from Ebay. It cost me £48 for the lower assembly (including postage). It is made by Holt, but it is the new design. The two blocks have changed position and instead of being vertical to the sides of the main body, they have been moved to the top and are positioned horizontally. This has the advantage that the control line between the two parts doesn’t get twisted and it doesn’t rub on itself. In the old design you would definitely get two parts of the rope touching and if it was twisted there would be much more friction. As a result when you had loads of kicker on, the friction would keep the kicker in that position even if you would un-cleat the line. Additionally the block for the primary line is made out of stainless steel and not plastic as in the old one. See the differences here.
Anyway I bought the rest of the parts, a double block with becket and a single block with a clevis pin (to attach the key), as well as some rope to rig it. I bought them from the Welsh Harp Boat Centre and Jeff was kind enough to splice the rope onto the top block for me. Nothing beats a good, personal service. I got enough rope to do all the control lines. I also bought some PVC tubing to thread the rope through in order to create handles for easier pulling.
So, today I have been re-doing all the rigging on my boat. I put the new kicker, I replaced the lines of the cunningham, although they were working fine it was three different colours and types of rope. Same with my outhaul. Now I have only three different kinds of rope and they are all the same colour, blue. Gradually I want to replace all the fittings on my boat with blue. I am not going to spend silly money to do that, but whenever I need to replace something, I will be buying blue parts. I already have a blue toestrap, blue mainsheet and all my control lines are blue. With one of the spare ropes that came out of the old cunningham I replaced the traveller sheet that seemed to be giving way bit by bit. I used a nice rope that Steve had given me.
Now I feel more confident that all the rigging has new ropes. Tomorrow I am going to test it all. The tubing was too thin and although it’s supposed to be 5mm internal diameter the 4mm rope wouldn’t go through it. Anyway I bought a metre of 8mm, on my way back home, and I will do the handles tomorrow. I am really glad with my new kicker and rigging.
Now Bubble is fully XD rigged and being patient paid dividends. It cost me nowhere near the cost of the official XD parts and the boat is as good as any other XD Laser. Obviously I could be spending money forever on new sails, carbon tiller extensions, low profile tillers, hikers and whatever else I can imagine. The point is that if I spend more money on Bubble right now, it’s not going to make me finish in a better position. I am really happy with Bubble the way it is. From now on it’s up to me to improve and finish higher in the fleet.