Karol Jabłoński explains his physical and technical preparations along with targets and goals before each season.
Preps for Swedish Championship 2022
I am going to say good bye to 2021-2022 season in Swedish Championship. There is no more sailable ice in Poland and the only opportunity to enjoy icesailing and racing is in Sweden next weekend.
If you thought that there is no motivation to sail in last event of the season you are very wrong. I am working on my runner program to change couple of things. Main goal is to apply shorter crown to most of my runners.
This picture was taken on our way back from Worlds/Europeans. This was first stop overnight at random parking in Sweden. We cooled down runners in snow to measure Robert’s winning runners and compare them with mine.
We measured couple of other sets as well. The conclusion was simple: I have to shorten the crown on some of my runners down to max 20in. And I completed this today. Waiting for ferry on Wednesday.
Easy runner fix
Every sailor should carefully inspect his runners after sailing not only checking for edge quality, shim tapes etc. but also for eventual delamination. It may happen that runner body exposed to extreme loads during sailing will delaminate from steel. Above picture represents this situation. You can see a very tiny gap between carbon flange and blade. If we fix it the runner it will be fine, if we continue sailing the water will be absorbed by the wooden core and body will begin to swell.
Here is quick and easy solution to fix it.
First things first. I use Dremel tool with approx. 1mm thick steel cutting blade to cut slot between blade and carbon flange.
I make a fine slot along almost full lenght of the blade making sure cutting disc stays in contact with steel at all time. This way I keep big outside portion of the flange untached. The depth of the cut is usually not more than 2-3mm.
This produces 1mm slot. If you are sure there is no moisture in the runner you can proceed to the next step otherwise let the remaining moisture escape by keeping the runner in room temperature for couple of days.
Needle and syringe will be your next tool to fill the slot with epoxy. Make sure you get slot nicley filled. After curing trim the excess of epoxy and the runner is ready to go. I add black dye to epoxy to blend the fix into body.
After this fix I never had the runner fail again.
Take care of your runners at all time. Short glance costs nothing and saves a lot of problems.
If your runner unexpectedly doesn’t nicely snug into chock any more it may be too late for this easy fix and new tutorial will be needed. I hope not.