The Winklebrig Forum

Hi Gerold, a very impressive result, you must be very pleased. I remember seeing your technical drawings in another post. You should go into production!

Good points Gerold. My plates are now about 17kg which I think is roughly the same as the earlier GRP encapsulated steel plates. Another point is the angle they are allowed to drop down, when I first bought the WB the stopper knot in the drop plate rope allowed them to drop down a full 90 degrees, putting too much stress on the mountings. I did consider copying your design for aluminium plates until I investigated the cost of aluminium plate!

Hi Robin, I have been fortunate enough to have had very useful advice from David Bone and have added second shrouds, inner forestay and mast support like yourself. David gave me ballast in the form of lead encased in plywood that sits on the cabin sole which certainly helps, but the biggest advance came with the drop plates. Your WB will probably have plywood boards with steel ends and mine actually had positive buoyancy. Following David's example, I routed out parts of the boards and inserted lead, melted down from scrap bits. I then encased the whole lot with glassfibre cloth and resin. The extra weight low down has made the boat appreciably less tender and is well worth doing. I believe the drop plates on earlier boats were of heavier construction, not made of plywood.

Congratulations! You have a lot of enjoyment ahead.

I am sure you will have great enjoyment on Cockle. We have had our first sail on Cressy today after a long COVID enforced break and it was wonderful to be back on the water. I hope you have many great adventures on Cockle.

Happy Christmas everyone and all the best for the New Year. Hopefully we can get more sailing in 2021, our WB Cressy has been confined to our barn all this year as we have been in tier 3 for most of the time.
Christmas arrived early today for Cressy with the delivery of a Torqeedo 1103. We have grown tired of the noise and fumes of our petrol outboard and as we only sail on Coniston Water with no tides or currents, a Torqeedo seemed the obvious choice. Can't wait to try it out!

Congratulations, you will love your WB! David Bone introduced me to International Woodskin, a type of oil/varnish hybrid. It doesn't flake off like old varnish, is very durable and gives a bit with wood movement. I have been very impressed with it and it is easy to touch up.
Enjoy working on your boat, it's almost as good as sailing it!

David, that is a very neat and elegant solution and I am unashamedly copying it at present. I have also been able to purchase 6 replacement Barton sheaves as mine had worn down considerably. Not sure when I am going to be able to test it all out!

I am certainly no expert, but looking at photos of WBs it seems earlier examples didn't have the bronze triple sheave arrangement, but instead had an identical plate as the shroud plate that served as an attachment point for whatever blocks were needed. Whilst the triple block arrangement looks nice, from a functional point of view, as you point out, it is not efficient. I have tried mock ups of various ways to mount the fitting using backing plates and wedges, but whatever I do looks Heath Robinson. I have temporarily threaded a short strop around the inner sheave and attached a block to that so it aligns itself with the pulling force. I use this for the running jib halyard that is used for raising the mast and it has made an enormous difference. It would obviously be good to have all the sheaves aligned correctly so I will be very interested in any solution you come up with. This all helps to while away lockdown, I have been nicely occupied with painting and varnishing, almost as good as sailing!

Hi, a really interesting website, thank you.

Peter Cook once said that he learned from his mistakes and can now repeat them exactly. Hopefully I have learned from my mistakes during our first year with Cressy and can now not repeat them this coming season.
It was a steep learning curve coming from dinghies, but helped enormously by the Forum, Martin Cartwright's book and most especially the help given by David Bone.
So Cressy is now in my barn and I am enjoying working on her almost as much as sailing her.
What needs putting right after last year?
Firstly the rigging. The 3 strand halyards that came with the boat looked fine but twisted infuriatingly leading to several embarrassing moments when the mainsail was jammed half way up. However often I untwisted the ropes, they always conspired to twist again when I looked away. I have replaced all the running rigging with multiplait, I understand new 3 strand doesn't twist and certainly looks the part, but the cost put me off.
Secondly I had used the port aft locker for storing the outboard petrol tank and had "sealed" the locker by applying expanding foam to all the gaps. Unsuccessfully, a mistake. The cabin had a very strong petrol smell, so the aft locker now has all its joints and gaps sealed with glassfibre tape and resin, an awkward job but hopefully it will fully isolate the locker. I have also installed a ventilator just aft of the locker lid to encourage air flow.
Thirdly, the bilge slowly filled with water over the summer, a few gallons but surprisingly the bilge pump never removed any. The suction is good but presumably the hose end is curled up above the water level. A session with the hosepipe when Cressy returned home revealed a surprising amount of water trickling down into the aft lockers from the gallows tubes. Over the wet summer that had slowly accumulated. Now I found lowering the gallows at the start of a sail was a bit of a nuisance, but raising them up at the end to lower the sail was often awkward, sails flapping, trying to find the holes to insert the split pins etc. So now I am going to  bring the mainsheet attachment forward instead of behind the gallows and always leave the gallows in place. That means I can tape over the base of the gallows tubes where they meet the bronze deck fittings with self amalgamating tape and stop the water getting in. I couldn't find any other leaks and the cabin portholes were water tight. I use the cleats on the aft lockers for several purposes, so have attached two eyes near the front outside edges of the locker openings and will use a rope strop for the mainsheet attachment, although a traveller would look nice at some stage.
Lastly the bilge boards stick when raised up and just as we moored on the last sail of the season the port side board detached and surfaced by the side of the boat, still attached by its cord. luckily there was no damage to the hull, just missing bolts, but the board had obviously had a hefty bash in the past driving the pivot hole an inch backwards. Two new boards to make and I will be following David Bone's method off adding some lead ballast to increase the weight. It was interesting that the board floated when it became detached, I would like some extra ballast.
So some enjoyable fettling still to come and hopefully the little niggles and mistakes of our first season will be put right.
Happy New Year everyone!

It's perhaps worth adding that the second forestay runs from the top of the mast to a block on the eyebolt on the stem and then back to one of the cleats on the cockpit roof. The original running forestay also runs back to the cockpit and I can easily ease the tension on both when leaving the boat for any length of time.

Hello Rolly,
I added a second forestay in addition to the second shrouds. I did this partly on advice from others and partly because I cannot see the condition of the original stainless steel forestay inside the roller reefing tube. Failure of one forestay would be disastrous so with a belt and braces approach I decided on adding a second. This was easy enough, I drilled through the stem and inserted a stainless threaded rod with an eyebolt each end. I drilled just underneath the step designed to support the mast whilst travelling. I used  Dyneema as a simple measure and it runs through plastic electric conduit for the first few feet, this makes the jib pass over it better, but is certainly not essential.
If you need any photos please let me know. Hope this helps,
All the best, John

Thanks Chris!

Hi, I could not find any myself, nor could I seem to source suitable bronze plate. In the end I bought some 8mm stainless plate from eBay, £4.50 plus postage, enough to make two plates. I cut it using an angle grinder using the original plates as templates. I thought making the slot at the top was rather difficult without appropriate tools so just drilled a hole and I use a shackle through that so the lanyard can't fray on the shroud plate. From any distance the plates look identical. Incidentally when removing an original plate to measure against I found both brass bolts had sheared through so I replaced all the bolts with stainless steel ones.