I purchased a Fiesta in 2002 as a gift for my six year old Grandaughter, although Grandad had permission to sail it occasionally !
It took me just seven days to complete the building of the yacht and I wrote to Tony Watson saying how pleased I was with the boat. I also made a number of observations which I feel would be of interest to existing owners, also to anyone contemplating building for the first time.
The first thing I noticed was the drawing which had been marked up with changes from the original drawn by David Swain. A newcomer would be confused by the alterations and I felt that it should be re-drawn to the current layout. I made a few changes mainly to the rigging. These were to replace the three-hole bowsies with 'Sails etc' 7x3 (87x), ss hooks (87c) for shrouds, backstay and jib anchorage, 6mm 'o' rings (82a) in place of silicon tube for holding rigging hooks to booms.
The jib and main boom sheeting line guides were formed by bending ss wire loops held under a grommet on the booms as indicated on the drawing. The rigging line terminations were held in place with ball ends (89). I made up a jib balance weight by wrapping 15 gm of sheet lead around the forward end of the boom. This was faired and painted on completion.
The total cost of the changes was under £7 but they made rigging the yacht much simpler. I tried to get the 30 minute set fast epoxy to fix deck to hull but my local B + Q had never heard of it so I used Araldite instead. I am never happy using epoxy resin glue with fibreglass. I always use polyester resin such as 'fastglass' together with small strips of glass cloth for the fin box, mast block, servo mount rails, rudder post support and fairlead post.
The lead ballast was coated with 'p38' and then sanded to a smooth finish before spraying with grey primer and gloss enamel.
The most awkward job was tightening the rudder arm to the rudder post with the deck in place. The allen key took ages to engage, perhaps my hands are to big !
The aluminium fin and rudder were filed to an aerofoil section which took quite a long time to achieve and they were finally sprayed with grey primer and red finish coat.
All in all, a very nice looking yacht and I know my grandaughter and I will have many happy hours of sailing.
