TOP-klasse forum

Goedemorgen, Hello everyone,

My name is Arnaud, from France. I recently start the renovation of a TOP given to me by a retired Dutch couple living in the Médoc region, in France. The boat had been stored for many years in a garage and is therefore in relatively good condition.

Having already made progress on the hull, I’m now looking at the rigging.
Sails are not in pretty good shape and somebody talked me about Zeilmakerij Molenaar. In fact, one sail come from them. I have already take contact with them but as my budget isn't unlimited i would like to know if some of you could have spare sail for sale.
Depending of the price I need grootzeil+genua, spi is optional for me with my budget. That would obviously involve sending it all the way to France.

Also I’d like to know if you have any photos of the rigging: the sheet routes, the halyard system, and so on… I already have the official plans, but it would still be helpful to see how others have set things up.

Last question, I mainly use International painting and anti fouling on this project, so I was actually planning to use their wood varnish as well, but do you have a recommended brand?

Thanks for your time
Arnaud Gallani
France

Hi Arnoud,

There should be plenty of useable old sails available. I don’t have any myself, but I can ask around. If it helps I can bring stuff to a location near Saint-Quentin (02).

We use a lot of products from a brand called De IJssel coatings, but I expect that’s a brand name they only use in The Netherlands. I think any good quality product can be fine. Two component epoxy based is the best.

Hi Arnaud,

I'm curious about your restoration process on the Hull. Have you documented it, did you make pictures?
Also the boat plans, is that something you can share?

Hi,

I’m not an expert but I can share what process I choosed. Here a link of some photos taken a long the restoration (not in order) :

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... RuhlYyjcXN


First, big sanding obviously, a lot of layer from old paint and anti fouling. I didn’t sand all layers since some of them where still pretty strong.

My hull wasn’t in good shape due to a past accident so I used « Watertite », an epoxy filler from International, to fill every gap or hole, up to 2-3cm max in theory (I used a lot this product in the past for various things, some bigger than 2cm, also in multiple layers for big gaps, and it’s still pretty sturdy).

Depends of the state of your dagger-board hole, but mine was also not in a good shape on the surface. I cleaned it, fill big gaps with filler again and add some « Sikaflex » between piece of wood before screwing it.

For the painting, I used « Interprotect », a bi-component prime/undercoat also from International. Put 5 layers, It is customary to alternate between several colours for easy futur sanding. You will see on some photos that I had to sand it down again and repaint a bit. I don't know why the paint has blistered, maybe due to raindrop and humidity, maybe due to some old layer of paint.

And last, 2 layers of anti fouling.

As I said, not an expert, my only knowledge is from boats restoration in my boys scout mouvement « Scout Marin de Bordeaux » where we are not always in a meticulous and neat finish to be honest (but our boats still shine and float).

Hi Arnaud,

Unfortunately we do not have access to your pictures in that folder. The easiest way to place pictures on this forum is just to drag&drop them into the text box when you type a message. This will upload the picture to the "attachments" tab after which you can click on the "place in text" button to place it somewhere in your message.

Like this:

It does work when you "open in a new tab". Thanks

It does indeed! Looks like nice work Arnoud! Did you verify if the boat is watertight before starting, or is that still to be seen?

There are two improvements to the design of the TOP which can be made also to strengthen existing boats, you may want to hear about:

1) all the way in the front of the boat at there is a vertical wooden bar (“halshout”) with a metal block containing two metal pulleys, used for two steel cables. This vertical bar is mounted to the frame number 9 (“spant 9”*). It is a good idea to add a reinforcement bar between the “halshout” and the frame number 8. This will prevent the “halshout” from breaking loose and being pulled backwards by the force of the steel cable holding the bottom of the front corner of the foresail.

* frames are counted from back to front, so the frame containing the door for accessing the trunk is number 1 2) the original construction between frame 5 and 7 was carrying the forces from the foot of the mast downwards towards the keel, which can eventually cause leaks. The improved construction uses a thicker bar between frames 5 and 7 which does not attach to the keel, but rather is dividing the forces over the frames 5,6 and 7. Retrofitting this is somewhat complicated but not impossible. It requires removing the existing construction, making a cut out half the height of the new reinforcement bar into the frame 6, and the same cut-out in the bar itself so that the bar can tightly slot in between the frames 5 and 7. Maybe something for a bit longer in the future

Improvement 1 indicated in red
Improvement 2 in blue

Hi,

So since my last post, I have put a layer of epoxy resins on the deck for better protection. A heat wave is on the go so I will wait better condition to put vernish layers, but here photos :
For the 2 improvement, the plans was shared to me with a construction document with this two improvement described, it’s on my list.

For the leaking part I will do a floating test when paint will be finish. Previous owner seems to have work on a leaking issues, hope my work will be enough.

Also, could some of you share to me some pictures of rigging on the mast and sheets roots ? To give me ideas. Mast foot is not finish but you can see some photos of my work on it(google drive link). I have to make steel axe parts

These are some pictures from last weekend that I obviously didn’t take for this purpose, but maybe they show you something helpful anyway: