Bobstay bow eye

My family finds the name of this part interesting.  Say it three times really fast.  

Kidding aside,  I take the function of this part very seriously.  This bow eye has to take a substantial part of the load that will be created when the screacher is flying from the bow pole.   The bobstay holds down the bow pole and is connected to this eye which is mounted fairly low in the bow of the boat.   Knowing that I will probably like to drive the boat pretty hard I want to do a good job on the part.  It's another one of those parts that reduce the amount of metal in the boat and requires the use of carbon fiber.

I was able to make the part entirely from cut-off and left over material.  Above is the initial foam core that I artistically created from one piece of foam cut out from the daggerboard core.

The actual bow eye is made from a simple mold, tape and two pieces of foam and some high density putty (Cabosil and epoxy resin).  

I found that cutting and applying  the narrow strips of carbon interesting.  The unidirectional is made by knitting together bundles of carbon fiber strands  in parallel.  It was impossible to keep the knitting together with a cut of the stitching every 5 bundles, so the wrapping consisted of gathering up 5 individual bundles and wrapping them around the bow eye.  The two plastic plates really helped to keep the bundles in place.  

Final covering with the s-glass cloth was also quite challenging.  I have to admit I finally resorted to using a stretch  plastic food wrap to keep the cloth down.  I saw this hint from a post to the buildersgroup by Andrew Cuthbert.

I used a small piece of G10 tube that was cut off in making the rudder mount to help make a solid bow eye opening.  I plan to lash the bobstay synthetic rope (no shackle) so I also tried to  'bell mouth' the opening as I do not think that synthetics like a tight radius.

Don't think I can put off working on the rudder any longer.