Swallow Yachts Association

Hi

I have BRE 100 - built in 2020.  A couple of the nasty plastic sheaves in the spinlock have worn badly and I would like to replace them - they appear to be about 25mm diameter - so it should be possible to source some.

It looked easy to take the organiser apart - 4 screws on the top plate.  They came out very easily - but did not release the top plate.  I'm sure I'm missing something obvious - if anyone has replaced a sheave in one of these fitting could give me a hint on how to get it apart.

thanks

Mark

This vessel now sold.

Hello all thanks for letting me join your forum-there i was thinking what a pleasant and welcoming place this was full of interesting helpful information all very useful as we have just bought a storm 15 with electric motor protusion issues and an insurance dilema (trailer cover) but no it would appear you are the target of international villains - all vey Bondesque but however you seem to be on top of it and i look forward to membership keep up the good work.
regards Pete

Yes, see you up there x 2.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821ea1aced319d02c9060f2/2025-Bayesian-InterimReport.pdf

A horrifying minute-by-minute account of the capsize and sinking while dragging its anchor.  The angle of vanishing stability was calculated at just over 70° in 'motoring condition' (no sails, centreboard up) and this was likely to be breached in winds in excess of 63 knots, possibly less.  A possible supercell arrived just before the capsize, with winds perhaps in excess of 70 knots, having been a gentle breeze when the guests retired to their cabins.  The crew and owner were not aware of the instability as the calculations were not included in the ship technical data.

Thanks for the feedback Graham. Hopefully see you in Scotland (twice ?) later this year.

The Interim Report is out, and makes grim reading. Puzzles me why they call the thing underneath Centreboard instead of Retractable Keel, despite it would have increased the angle of vanishing stability through lowering by 14 degrees at least, so it was ballasted.

Is there a known potential danger from a lowered centreboard / keel in a situation where a yacht may be feared to start pulling its anchor?

Having banished clunking centreboard misery by installing Bentley boards, I have now turned my attention to clunking tiller misery.  I noticed a couple of weeks ago that there was an increasingly slack response to tiller movements and generalised rudder clunking was being transmitted up the tiller.

I removed the pintle bolts from the rudder stock and the attached photo was what I found.  I had installed partly threaded bolts as advised by Ray S in 2022 but they were A2 rather than A4 stainless, which was causing nasty rust stains thereabouts and possibly also galvanic corrosion.  I have now replaced these with A4 part-threaded M8 bolts and peace and harmony has been restored. 

While I was at it I also tightened up the rudder pivot bolt as there was slight side-to-side rudder play.  Because I have large diameter 2mm thick Teflon/PTFE washers between the rudder and rudder stock (see https://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/smf/index.php/topic,329.0.html), in addition to using a part-threaded bolt for the pivot as advised by Ray, the rudder can still be hauled smoothly up and down.

Mark,

If you can work out what IP address your iPhone 'private relay' is currently using and send it to me at the .ch email address above, I'll look into it. The one that you previously reported as having difficulty with isn't banned, so it looks like private relay is now making you keep company with a different set of shady characters!

One of the Cloudflare IP addresses (which I think Apple private relay uses) is currently reported in less than glowing terms:
"Reported for spam and brute force attacks, 475 websites attacked, discovered Feb 09, 2024, last activity May 15, 2025 07:06:41 GMT0.
2 brute force attacks, last activity May 09, 2025 18:58:26.
This address has registered spam on several websites and is currently blacklisted."

This isn't just limited to VPNs, although very useful to know they cause problems. I've need locked out for the last couple of weeks on my iPhone - second time it's happened. No VPN, although the iPhone 'private relay' is enabled. I'm not convinced that causes the problem, because I can get round it using the private browsing option. Presumably just a different set of ip addresses.