WOW where has the time gone?

It seems like just yesterday I was writing the last post about the regatta in Lanzarote! Now it is almost New Years and I have have done nothing on this for so long.

I can tell you that it has been a bit of zoo around here. I have been in final negotiations with Quantum regarding the sale of my company to them. Well all of that is now done and I am officially no longer a loft owner! I will moved to by Quantum to a new loft in Chicago.

Quantum is currently finalizing the lease of a building and we will be up and running by the Strictly Sail boat show in February. Exciting times I can tell you!

I am not sure what is next for me on the sailing scene but I guess either a Swan regatta or maybe St. Pete NOOD. I will keep you in the loop as it comes.

I cannot tell you all geeked I am to be moving to Chicago. That is such a great town and the sailing community are some of the nicest people and they take their sailing seriously I cannot wait to start building new working relationships with the sailors of Chicago.

I will also post the new address as soon as we have signed the lease. It is in a great spot, easy to get to and while it is nowhere near as large as my current building, it will serve the sailors just as well.

We plan on having a series of talks at the loft over the winter and again a list of those will come out real soon.

Anyway, I will keep in touch on a more regular basis I promise.

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!

PS the picture is of Porto Rotundo, much warmer times!

VI Trofeo Cesar Manrique Recap

Good day all

Again sorry for the delay in writing more. But the last two days have been busy with getting the boat sorted and loaded for the trip back to the Med. It now appears that we are going to ship straight to Italy so I will not be going back to Palma at this point. It also means that I may be home a bit early.

As I sit here in my hotel room and start to think back about this experience here in Lanzarote I am still struck by the amount of work, effort and flat out cash the Calero family puts into this event! The closing nights dinner, show and party were totally unlike anything you will ever see in North America and quite frankly I have never seen it in Europe either. (I will have some pictures from Esa to show at some point).

Saturday was the last day of the event and we had quite a match race going with Better then... We finished both races just behind them which gave us the same points for the event but due to our two thirds on day 2 gave us the 5th place on the count back. It was some great sailing the last day but a couple big crew errors made it much closer then it actually was.

The Blue Nights team is starting to get better but we still lack a little bit of pace most of the time through the lower wind ranges. As soon as the #3 is used we are quite fast and can hold out own. But it is in the lighter breeze when we cannot hold a lane upwind that is causing our biggest issues. We are working on that and I think there are some new sails coming to help out that area.

Tea is working very hard at putting all the pieces together to have a competitive team on the water and to get the budget sorted out so that we have the right tools on the water as well. We still have a couple spaces in our quiver that need to be addressed but that is being handled as well.

This trip has been awesome for some other reasons. I now have some really good friends here in Europe. The Italian "skippers" have been great and I have become quite good mates with Ricardo from Talj the Swan 45. We have been all working together quite well to get the boats loaded, shipped and sorted out.

When I get back to the states, I want to put together a full proper report on this event. I truly believe that we need to get a good US contingent to look at coming here and sailing. The people are awesome, the sailing is awesome and it is half way home by ship anyway!
Cheers for now.
Tac

Race Day 1 and 2

Well we are just about to have boat call for the third day of racing. Today is a 30 mile Coastal race, which is really nothing more then a large reach around this side of the Island. Not really looking forward to it but what can you do?

Anyway I did not write yesterday morning because I actually had nothing good say. We flat out had a shocker and nothing good came out of the day. What we had in the two great practice days was lost somehow and we once again struggled to have speed and crew work. We finished the day with a DNF and a 7th. (the DNF was because the committee used a tiny little blue flag as the pin end and none of the Swans saw it. A couple of them went back after having thought they finished and sailed through the proper line, we on the other hand were one the did not.)

So yesterday was a new day, Race day 2. Started in much the same fashion weather wise, sunny, warm and good breeze. After a long delay for the Swans we finally got a good race off. We had a great battle with the boats all within meters of each other. At one point we were in 2nd, then in 7th then finally across the line in 5th. We found out later that two boats ahead of us were OCS. So we moved up to 3rd.

The second race of the day saw us regain our starting ability and Tea and I had the boat flying up the first beat so we are really in the hunt at this point. We round the top mark in 3rd and start to slowly eat away at the lead of 1 and 2. At the bottom mark we chose to make a left turn while the top 2 did a right turn. But the kite under the bow stopped a great chance to take the lead. As it was we only crossed two boat lengths behind the two of them. We managed to hold of the rest of the fleet up that beat and down the last run. We finished with a hard fought and well earned 3rd place. With our two thirds we moved out of the basement on the score card and ended up 2nd for the day!

Today is another day and the weather from Commanders says the same as yesterday. 15-20 gusts to 25 from the N-NE. Sunny and warm. Not too bad!
Cheers

Tac
(Still no pictures)

Practice Day #1 Lanzarote

Well today we finally went for sail, after two more hours of tuning and retuning the rig. We got out and sailed in 5-12 knots of breeze against both Better Than and Ulika.

They had been sailing for a hour more then we had, but when we joined the races that they were having we went 4, 0 and 1. We are going very well and our crew is getting better. Things on the Blue Nights are starting to move in the right direction.

We had one great start against just Ulika that turned into a full on Match race start with Bill showing that he can still out dual his opponent. Tea did an awesome job putting the boat where Bill told her to and as a result we had the other team pinned over the line early and dead in the water. Big grins on all of our faces and some pretty heated Italian on the other boat :)

We are quickly getting our shit together and starting to make things happen. The boat is getting there as well, we do need to do a few little things yet to make our lives easier but for the most part we are starting to show what we can do.

Today we looked at yet another mainsail that we bought from Vixen and again we were not disappointed. I think we will be sticking with this sail for this event and things are looking up.

I know I promised some pictures, but the dumb ass that I am, I left in on the dock.

We also had a interesting thing happen to day. Bill just decided that going downwind at 9 knots that he would jump over board and do a man over board drill. We did have a vote and by only the smallest margins did we decide to go back and get him.

So all is well. I really do like the Spanish way of Yacht racing. Tomorrow is the practice race and it starts at 4 PM! The next two days of racing start at 2 PM! That is just bloody awesome.

Anyway, off to shower and head to a crew dinner.
Cheers


Tac

Hello from Lanzarote!

Sorry that I have not been keeping up with blogging, but if you could see where I have been staying here in Lanzarote you would cut me a bit of slack! This hotel is a FLASH and I have lounging at the pool until yesterday, when the boat finally arrived here.

The delivery was a dream and according to one of the ships crew if each delivery was that nice more people would sail on ships. It must have been pretty calm as I had left a shifter, (crescent wrench) on the coachroof and it was still there when the boat arrived.

The off loading was much quicker then the loading, something about less unioned stevedores. So we were back at the dock by about 11 AM and the work began there. Guinness started grinding and Art and I empty the boat.

We are starting to sail tomorrow where we have set up a bit of a tuning session against one of the Italian teams, Ulika. Things will be starting to take off.

I will get some pictures posted from here in the next day.
Cheers for now.

Tac

PS, a shout out to Sparkles and Ace! I hope your trip home was easy.

Hello from Palma!

I have been here a couple days now and the weather for the most part has been amazing! It is quite hot, the sun shines and the breeze is up!

I arrived on Thursday afternoon, checked into the hotel then went to check in on the boat. I was having trouble getting to the boat as there as a language issue with the guard at the gate :) So I stopped to check my email. While that happening a giant storm rolled in and I mean HUGE! I could not even get to the boat by foot as it was blowing about 65 and there was hail. I was sitting in the car watching a 90'+ heeled over about 30 degrees! That is how hard it was blowing.

When the storm ended, I drove around to the gate that was once closed to me and drove right through. I think that the club must have know that the various "skipper's" would be coming in quickly and did not need to have the hassle of the gate.

When I got out to the dock that the boat was on, all you could was carnage! The dock, (see picture), was gone and each of the boats on that dock had damage. So we start the week with boat work. Oh, well it could have been much worse.

Anyway, here are a couple pictures. I will try to keep updating but the next couple days are boring and filled with nothing but work on the boat, the cradle and then getting the two of them together on the Ship to Lanzarote.
Cheers

Tac

Audi Invitational Recap!

Well here I sit in the Airport in Olbia awaiting my flight to Rome. The regatta is over and I again must leave one of the most beautiful places I have ever sailed. This is my second time here and I cannot wait to come back again next season!

The regatta is amazing! The organizers did a bang up job of putting together great racing, great parties and also great logisitics for this event. Audi as a sponsor stepped up and provided an opportunity to mix superstars that they sponsor with each team for the Coastal race on Saturday and the guest had a great time seeing what sailing was all about.

Our Rockstar was cross country skiing gold medalist Pietro Piller Cotter. Pietro helped the home county Italians win the 4 X 10 KM relay in the 2006 Winter games in Torino! Pietro is a great guy who had never sailed before but had some much fun that he came back with us on Saturday to finish the regatta! I do see a sailboat in his future!

Anyway back to the racing. As mentioned on Saturday we did a Coastal race. The race was only 16 miles for the Swans as the wind was quite light and we needed to finish in time for the Gala dinner at the YCPR. We had a great start, punched out at the pin end. Sailed out just short of lay line, tacked over to port and crossed the whole fleet! There really is not much like that first tack onto port and seeing the picture window below the boom, with you crossing the entire fleet!

We rounded the top about 4 boat lengths ahead of our "friends" on Atlantica. Well as they say, little details can derail a big effort and that is exactly what happened. We had a screw up in the set and that allowed three boats to catch up and roll over us, to the point where we had to gybe early in order to not get trained by the whole fleet.

Well going right downwind never work all week and this time was no different. This made of a long race in the mental up and down game. We finished 12th. It was really a huge blow to the team who had worked very hard at giving us in the back of the boat good crew work. The situation also was not helped by the fact that we were now sailing on a course that allowed for no new tactical opportunities to claw our way back to a more respectable finish.

Saturday was again welcomed with a sunny sky and light wind, in fact no wind at all. So we had a dock postponement for a couple hours. When we started to head to the racing area it looked real promising to get a good race off. Well the wind died forcing the RC to postpone again. About 15 minutes before the cut off time we got the last race off. One general recall later we were off.

Again Bill, Tea and Guinness had a great start down by the pin. We sailed very well, (again we now have speed!!!), up the first beat and rounded the top in 5th place. Johnny and I made a bad sail call for the run, choosing our A2 instead of the A1 and that cost us two places at that point. The second beat dealt really fluky conditions with boats just feet apart being in totally different wind strengths. This allowed a couple couple boats to get by and we rounded the last top mark in 9th place.

Bill and I saw a nice pressure lane off to left and decided to not do the standard gybe set like the rest of the fleet had done. We sailed lower and faster all way down the left side picking off one boat to finish the regatta with a very hard fought 8th place.

It is truly my opinion that our score card should have been all single digits for this event. We sailed better then it shows and we are getting our program together and we will continue to move up the leader board.

The next event is in Puerto Calebra in Lanzarote. It looks like it will be a great event and we will continue to work hard at getting better.

I will have a more technical debrief posted at some point this week. I am just burnt out right now and will have to way till I have my head sorted a little better!
Cheers

Tac

OUCH!

Well the day on water was a very eventful one. We have many goods things that happened and a couple of not so good things as well.

We are starting the boat very well again, the second start was a glamor! We have speed and angle which was missing in Cowes and we are looking better on the crew work side. However we managed to give away far too many boats with bad luck, bad tactics and a couple bad gybes.

In the first race we were solidly in the top six for the first 3/4 of the beat. We had great speed and Bill put us in really nice spots. Tea's driving is getting better by the leg and we were quite at ease with where we were. As we were approaching the far left side, Bill called for a tack as the other boat just to windward of us had motioned that they were going to tack. As we tacked they changed their mind and we did not have enough room to duck so we had to "panic" tack back. That caused us to lose a few precious boat lengths and set up for further disaster later.

We now are fully on port tack layline and as we came to the mark we did our tack inside two boat lengths and fouled another team. So we needed to do a 360 penalty turn. We ended up rounding the mark last! That is how close the racing is here. We did manage to pass a boat on the final run, we are really fast downwind the Quantum A2 is awesome!

For the second race we were all set up down near the pin end, allowed one boat to cross over us on port so that we kept our hole on the line. Just as we were starting to turn up after his stern we got hit from below by Atlantica and the hole you see above was created. Tea did a great job of regaining focus and just driving the boat. We again had speed and angle as good as anyone. We rounded the top in 6th place. We had another good run with lots of pace. We passed one boat and rounded the bottom mark in 5th place. This is where the race goes pear shaped.

The wind was starting to fight the gradient breeze versus the sea breeze and Bill thought that the sea breeze would win the battle so we headed off to the right. Well as it turns out it did not and we rounded the top mark the second time in 12th. We again sailed lower and faster then people on the runs. We made considerable time up on 4 boats, not quite enough against one, we finished overlapped, and did catch and pass another boat. So we ended up with a 11th.

Our standings do not show how well we are going through the water. What was once our problem is gone! We have speed and can hold a lane. Now we just need to the crew work down to no mistakes and get around the race a little better and we will start to see some solid results.

Once we hit the dock Bill and Guiness started to attack the hole in the side. We are lucky to have two boat builders on the team this week. I was supervisor/gopher for the product. We did miss the party but the boat is ready to sail today.

We have the coastal race today and some VIP on board for that. I heard it was a Olympic gold medalist in Cross Country skiing. More on that tomorrow.
Cheers

Tac

Practice Day

Good day again.

Well today we had a great practice late in the day as the Mistral slowly died away and we had a nice 18-22 knot day. We had two important goals today. 1) Choose which mainsail we would use and 2) do some spinnaker/crew practice. We were able to accomplish both tasks and are quite happy with the sail selection and we are a work in progress on the crew practice. But that is what you get for having a couple new players in key positions. Time as they say will conquer that.

We needed to decide whether we were to use the newly reshaped WB mainsail or the Quantum mainsail that we bought from Vixen. I can say that the WB mainsail is a much different sail then we last saw it. I am happy to report that the changes to the luff curve of the sail that I recommended were applied and the mainsail looks much better. This is for sure still set up more as a heavy air sail but the boat was able to finally sail to targets up wind.

Due to the weather forecast however we have chosen the Quantum Mainsail as it will give us more range for the conditions that we are expected to see for the remainder of the regatta. It is quite nice to finally have an option and finally have some pace with angle. Thing are looking better.

I am sitting at the yacht club getting ready for race day #1. The breeze is supposed to be about 9-14 going right all day. Beautiful sunny skies and warm temps!!!!!!!!! This is for sure not Cowes!

Here is a picture to prove it!
Cheers


Tac

Live from Porto Rotondo!

Well you all should like this blog much better then the Cowes blog! What can I say, the weather here is awesome! A little Mistral is in for the morning but that is supposed to diminish by afternoon. So we have a little time to check email and for me to write a short a note to you all.

The area here is gorgeous and the little sailing that we did was quite nice. The good news is that the new sails fit and looked like they should in conditions under range!

The boat was a bit of mess after the shipping and the delivery here, so we have been pushing through quite a work a list but that is almost finished as well. We will be going out today to finalize the sail wardrobe for the event and shaking down the crew work. We are all quite ready to hit the race track and get some serious racing in.

Here are a couple shots of the harbor.
Cheers

Tac

Racing for a Cause!

2007 Windy City Match Race

I was fortunate enough to be asked to sail on board Heartbreaker for the WCMR. I was to replace Wally Cross, not an easy feat for me at all. Wally has been one of the best in the Farr 40 class since its inception, proof by the reason why I replaced him.......he is in Copenhagen trimming mainsail on Warpath for the Farr 40 Wold Championships.

The regatta was put together by a great group of people from Chicago including a customer of mine Rick West and he awesome wife Liz Ware. They along a group of sailors came up with the idea to hold a match racing regatta in Farr 40's and also couple the event with a great cause to raise both money and awareness for the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation.

On Friday night there was a reception held that featured two pretty cool events. First there was a silent auction with some really incredible items that were donated and raffled off. As I told Liz, I kept looking for the "poor sailmakers" Auction table with items starting at $1.50! The one I really wanted was the Porsche driving school experience. But it went for more then I can handle.

The second thing that was pretty cool for the people at the event was that Tucker Thompson came and gave a little video show of the high lights from the 32nd America's Cup. He did a nice job with it and the public quite liked it.

One touching moment happened in the opening minutes of the night when a young lady, IIRC, of 13 got up and gave a moving speech about what it is like to be a child living with HIV/AIDS. It really showed why it was important to to be involved with this regatta.

The weekend was great for sailing, not enough wind maybe, but the skies were clear and the competition was tough. The team that won was a full professional match racing team which feature a pile of BMW/Oracle sailors and Cameron Dunn from Mascalzone Latino.

It was great to sail against such talent and also to have a little of that on our boat as well. Our Tactician was none other then Dave Dellenbaugh! Dave was the tactician for the German AC team in AC 32 this year.

We finished 3rd out of the 4 teams and we are also the only team to beat EWM and that was a satisfying race as we led the whole way around and extended to a real big margin on the final run.

I really wish that we could more of this format of racing. Match Racing is so much fun and so intense that more people should try it.

I look forward to seeing what Rick and Liz do for next year, they say they are going to keep going and build it for the next several years. I look forward to racing in it again next season.

Check out the website and please feel free to donate to the worthy cause!
Cheers

Tac

Wheel of Fortune!

This is a little article that I wrote about a year ago for D1D. I just thought I would throw it out one more time as the season is well on its way and maybe some of you drivers and tacticians are having the same issue at this time. Sorry for the regurge but I think it is a good way to look driving.
Cheers

Tac

The Wheel of Fortune

I have found myself doing ton of sailing lately, with the two Mac races, Harbor Springs, the Brian Jackman Farr 40 regatta in Chicago and now I am at a MUMM 30 event in Cleveland OH.

Over the past month I have sailed on many different boats and various levels of crew. It is a great learning experience each time I sail. Here is something that I have learnt over the past few months of summer.

I am pretty blessed with my job in the fact that I get to sail on many boats with great people. One boat that I have been sailing on this season is Team LaSalle’s Farr 40 in Chicago. LaSalle bank the US arm of ABN AMRO has sponsored a Farr 40 for two seasons in Chicago, this season I am calling tactics on the boat. In the two seasons we have had two full time drivers and a part timer this past weekend.

All three sailors have been dinghy sailors and making the transition is not as easy as some think. All three of them have been good drivers for the most part and with some time on the boat I think that have become quite good and I enjoy sailing with them.

But over the past two years, (I was the mainsail trimmer last year); I have been in the back of the bus and noticed an interesting phenomenon. Having been a dinghy sailor a long time ago I kind of forgot how you drive one. Usually with a Laser or a Vanguard you are moving the tiller a bunch to “work” the boat over waves, create lanes and get out of sticky spots. Well when the dinghy driver comes to a boat that has a wheel you generally get what I have termed “Wheel of Fortune”. The dudes are spinning the wheel like they are on a game show!

Great big turns on the start line, rudder moving all the time upwind and downwind because their experience is working the rudder over, under and around waves with the dinghy so in their mind then need to do the exact same way. Well boys that is slow!

When you watch the best drivers in the fleet they are barley ever moving the wheel at all. They find the sweet spot and just sort drive with a movement that rotating your wrist allows. It is quite a difference in performance between the game show contestant and the smoothest drivers in the fleet.

On the keel boats like the Farr 40 moving the rudder a whole bunch just adds turbulence and drag hence slowing the boat down. So if you get the chance to move up from a dinghy to a keel boat please remember to hold that wheel as still as possible. Your tactician and mainsail trimmer will thank you!

Gold Cup review

Well, I am now back in Holland and starting to get over the jet lag, the cold and 30 hours of hell that I went through to get home. Oh well, this is the life of a pebble star right?

While the results are not at all what any of us had hoped for the time spent with the crew of Blue Nights was quite enjoyable. The Fin's are a bunch of fun and we are all better sailors then the results showed. Bill Abbott did an amazing job coaching Tea and getting us set up in good spots, but when the dog don't hunt, the dog don't hunt.

I had a bunch of things occur for the first time when I was over there. 1) 7 straight days of rain. 2) had a "I wish I could reef the main" thought. 3) Had a man over board, first time on a big boat! 4) ate proper English Fish and Chips. 5) Saw an actual pub brawl, blood and all. 6) Finished last in a regatta.

Of all of things listed above the one that I would like to focus on is the Man over board. It is scary to see happen and we were lucky in the fact that it was broad daylight and relatively flat seas! We had just completed a gybe, well almost, when the boat wiped out and when the pole skied the guy got real tight real fast and flicked our bow dude Ville over board. He briefly held onto the spinnaker pole, which was now on the wrong side of the boat and in the water, until it dunked him under.

Ville was quite smart here I think. He just pushed off away from the boat and all the lines that were dragging, he was worried about getting tangled and having something bad happen. Good call I say. His inflatable life jacket worked and a bobbing he went. As he bobbed past the stern, he gave a thumbs up and that allowed us to settle down, focus on getting the kite down, lines in and motor on so that we could go back and pick him up.

One other thing that allowed Bill and I to focus on the job at hand on the boat, was that there was two chase boats that went immediatley to Ville's aid. He would not let them pull him out, but it was comforting to all three of us that if we could not get there fast enough he had a plan B.

I would say that when it was all said and done, Ville was in the water for 5-7 minutes. We were able to fish him out of water on our first swing back by. Once we got him back and found out that all was well, we rehoisted the spinnaker and started to race again. (Yes we called the RC and notified them that we had used the motor in order to pick up a man overboard. We also went down and read the racing rules to ensure that we did not break any rules.)

When we hit the dock, Bill went and filed a notice to the Jury that we had used the motor to fish Ville out of the water, made no gain by doing so and then returned to racing. After a short deliberation it was deemed that we did exactly the right thing and our score was held.

I want to thank the crew for A) not losing focus or control of the situation. B) for getting the job done in a timely fashion and getting the boat back to pick Ville up. C) for the productive debrief after the fact where we talked about how we can make this manouver even better in the long run.

Things that I think we did wrong in this.

1) As soon as we saw Ville over board, one person should have focused just on smoking the Spinnaker Halyard. 2) Because of the fact that it was day light, there were two boats around, we did not keep a full time eye on him. We focused too much on getting the sails down and getting back. 3) I am a bit concerned, though I do understand, that Ville was willing to push off on his own. This could have been disaster, especially if it had been at night. 4) because his life jacket went off and he gave the thumbs up we never threw him the life ring. Again, only because of the circumstances.

We were lucky that he went in unharmed and that we did an acceptable job getting him back. It was an eye opening experience for sure.

So people practice your man over board drills more often and really talk about it when days look like shit maybe able to hit the fan!!!

PS, as more people will now know, thanks to Scuttlebutt, I have a post below about a Letterman style Top 10. While we are still sorting it out, I would like to say that those comments came from 7 straight days of rain, a really bad cold that I had as a result of 7 days of rain and a lot of frustration. At the end of the day, Cowes is an interesting place to sail and the amount of boats on the water every day is amazing. Everyone should go there at least once in their lives to sail. Just make sure that you ask me if I am going first. If I am, change the dates that you go! You will get sun and good breeze.

PSS, the picture is of Ville "Flipper" Pietarinen

Cheers

Tac

Hey All

Not much good I can say about today, the weather still sucks, a bunch of us are starting a compilation for a Letterman style Top 10 "reasons why I will never come back to this hell hole". :)

Yesterday I was beat and came back to the yacht club for a nap, (I am now staying at the other RCYC). then I had to go to the sail loft to fix a shattered Code 3 Jib that we used most of the day. So I did not get a chance to post. We had a good day, with an 1oth and a 15th. Much like the J-22 Program, we are real fast downwind. If not for that we would be in serious trouble!

We are having some serious speed issues upwind that are trying to be sorted out, however there is not much you can do on 7 cylinders when every one else is using 8.

This is a shot of us yesterday with our "flower power" mainsail! (Ned if you are reading what do you think?)

Anyway, tomorrow is a early start, about the time you all are going to bed I have to wake up for a 6:00AM boat call for a round the island race. We are going to go the opposite way that America did all those years ago. It should be an absolute brilliant day for it........you know raining like shit and real windy. What fun. That is reason 483 for me never to come back! :) :)
Cheers From lovely old England.

Tac

From our Coach!

The following is on the Boat log on the www.bluenights.fi site. It is from our Coach Eero. (Eero is one of the crazies that went around the World the wrong way in the BT Challenge!)
Cheers

Tac

PS we do have the best looking owner/skipper :)

Tuesday 3 July 2007, Cowes – Isle of Wight (UK)

Swan 45 Gold Cup / World Championships 2007

Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes – Isle of Wight (UK)

The British weather has not been favouring the international fleet of Swan yachts entering the Swan 45 World Championships and the Swan European Regatta for other types of Nautor Swans. The teams have arrived well in advance to have some training on the tricky waters of the Solent, participating in a tune-up regatta during last weekend. Also Blue Nights has been sailing since last Saturday, scoring promising 5th and 6th place in Saturday’s two races among the fleet of 12 Swan 45’s. On Sunday Blue Nights’ training main sail broke on the first beat of the first race and the boat retired from the day’s racing. Monday was measurements and registration day for the Gold Cup and Team Blue Nights was the second boat to have “all clear” from the race office. Crew weighing went smoothly as well with 10 kilograms to spare!

Today Blue Nights went out to check out the new headsails and to practice gybes and mark roundings. Weather was favourable for a couple of hours with an increasing south-westerly blowing up to 24 knots. Arthur Hallberg and John Wilkinson were missing from the crew as Arthur had a day-off trying to recover from a sore throat and symptoms of a cold as John was taking care of some business matters before the regatta takes his full attention for the rest of the week. Hannu Bask and myself jumped on board to get some photos of the crew in action as well as giving helping hand here and there. From tomorrow onwards we are looking at things from outside, Hannu through his tele-objective and me with my video camera and wet notes to give the team the daily feedback and de-briefs

The Swan 45 fleet consists of 22 yachts and the crew lists carry some big names from the international sailing circuits. The participating teams come from eight different countries with the host nation topping the list with six entries. To maximise their teams performance the owners have contracted some full-time pros for their crews: Mike Broughton, Tim Powell, Wally Cross, Larry Leonard, Jules Salter, Simon Fisher, Andy Beadsworth, Steve Hayles, Eddie Warden-Owen, Chris Law and Chris Larson will all be giving their best shot trying to win the worlds title of Swan 45 class.

The racing program for Swan 45’s has twelve windward / leeward races in it plus a long distance race on Friday. The “sausage courses” will be located in the north-easterly side of the Solent where the fleet will be crossing the North Channel and will have to be aware of the ships crossing the racing area. The shallow water on the plateau will minimise the tidal effects as far as it is possible, but the navigators and tacticians have to be on top of their strategies to fight for top positions. Crucial times are around 2-2½ hours before the high water when the tide starts already turning in some areas while an opposite flow still takes place in other areas. Laying the marks will be tricky at times and the latest technology and the experienced strategists on board will be playing an important role. If winds remain as strong as they have been since last Friday, the foredeck crews will be working hard to get the manoeuvres happen smoothly.

Blue Nights has welcomed a couple of new members into the team since Capri Sailing week and the experienced Canadian duo, Bill Abbott and Tac Boston will be taking the positions of a tactician (Bill) and a sail trimmer (Tac) in the season’s main event. Bill is a former Soling world champion and has represented Canada in the Olympic Games as well. Clive Cosby of Lymington (UK), the former Global Challenge skipper on board Team Stelmar, has joined the team as a boat captain and trimmer. Clive has been working hard to get the boat race ready since her arrival in UK a couple of weeks ago. Clive and navigator John Wilkinson will give the necessary local knowledge to the Blue Nights crew.

The warning signal for the first race will be given at 10h20 local time tomorrow and the aim is to complete three upwind–downwind races during the day.

Event website with racing results: http://www.rys.org.uk/da/42631

Eero Lehtinen, Cowes (UK)

Measurement Day

Well today in Cowes, it was measurement day! Oh and guess what......it rained again! Not all day and not real hard but just enough to be bloody annoying :)

We on the Blue Nights were teed up to measure the sails and have the safety inspection handled today. I was very happy to see a couple of the measurers that I have over the years in the MUMM fleet handling the sails and such. Mario, (sorry I do not know your last name), from Italy and Carol Abbott from the UK. I can give some words of wisdom here, they do not mess around, if you are out of line they will tell you!

We ended up passing with flying colors on all accounts and we are now officially in as a team. We weighed in, measured in and are off to sail tomorrow with the good sails for the first time. (I just hope it is not blowing 30 again like today).

There are a couple of us, myself included that have a serious cold due to the weather and I know of a couple other teams that have a bit of a Flu bug going around. Why, o'why are we sailing here?

I am going to try to get some pictures from Esa's camera tomorrow. There are a pile of Swan's here in the harbor and I thought it would be cool to show you all what it is like, (of course then it will be sunny, so maybe pictures every day?)

Anyway, tomorrow I will check out the crew lists and let you all know who of the who's who is here.

Cheers for the night

Tac

PS here are some links for you to follow.

http://www.cowesharbourweather.com/
www.cowesyachthaven.com
www.bluenights.fi
http://www.swan45class.org

finally live from Cowes!

It has been a total shit fight for me to get on line here in Cowes. We did not have any wireless hot spots here the crew house and the one at the yacht haven kept punting me from the service. So today is the first day since Friday that I have been on line! Yikes, talk about total withdrawl!

Well what can I say about Cowes? It is bloody cold, bloody windy and oh yeah it has rained every day! And I do not mean drizzle rain, I mean full on pouring buckets at times.

We have sailed a total of 3 and a fifth races. The first day we did not have a practice mainsail and with it blowing 25-30 we did not want to risk our good mainsail. So we did not leave dock. We just got the boat sorted out. Johnny and I spend 3 hours sorting the rig out and getting it ready.

Yesterday we sailed in 15-18 knots with heavy rain. Not a lot of fun in that regard but good to get sailing. We had some decent races, some bad luck and one blown out kite. We had torn it and I tried to fix it, but it was so wet that the the spinnaker tape just did not stick enough to survive a 22 knot puff! So it is currently at the UK loft headless! Good thing it is the spare.

Today we sailed for 1/2 of the first beat, in 22-29 knots. We shattered the leech of the 3dl Mainsail. Had to withdrawl. but again it was rainy, cold and shit out. How do people live is a question that has been asked as many times as who killed JR?

Anyway, now that I have moved to the Yacht Club with the owner and Bill Abbott I will be online more and try to keep up to date. I am dead tired and I am going to sleep!
Cheers

Tac

Finally got a Tyrant type regatta

After three years of hard work, countless hours of optimizing and several really crash and burns we had Tyrant Weather for an entire regatta.

Tyrant is Don Thinschmidt's Nelson Marek 43 that we have optimized over the past few years to make it more suitable for Great Lakes sailing and for getting to the Island faster for the Mac races.

This past weekend was the Chicago NOOD regatta. The annual trek to Chicago for some great racing saw 12 boats in PHRF section 1. We fit right in the upper middle of the rating band and had some good boats both above and below us in rating. It was looking like a good old fashion knife fight might happen in this fleet! That proved to be right.

One thing that is for sure with Tyrant, we optimized her for 6-12 knots mostly downwind. Well we had that breeze for each race, although we did have to sit around each day for that to happen!

Boy are we fast downwind! In the light air we are able to hold our own against the bigger boats and we can really put time on them on the runs. The first race we rounded the top 5th and by the leeward mark, (1.25 miles away) we were first and never looked back.

The second race we had a couple major issues, one gybe went pear shaped and we had to gybe back. That meant we had to settle for a 4th. After the second day we were in second place one point behind Pinball Wizard and one point ahead of Seagoon.

Sunday more of the same waiting, but it filled in much sooner and the RC moved us closer to shore so that we could get a race off. We had an awesome start all lined, but I pulled the trigger a little early and had to go back. (Wizard was over as well and never came back). By the top mark we were back in the hunt and with the pace we have downwind we were able to claw back and finish second to Seagoon.

Now we were tied with the "Goon" with one race to go. A little match racing pushed them to where I thought they were buried, so I tacked away to get a clean start for myself. Boy that was a mistake! They got free to the right and I was pinned! They found a nice little lefty and were punched out again, boy are they fast upwind! We gybed after the top mark and hooked into a little pressure that the rest of the fleet did not have. That closed us up to where we had an over lap at the leeward mark. But, we cannot sail as high as long as they can. So we tacked away and cleared up. We rounded the top mark for the last time about a minute behind them. Now it was a speed test. We sailed right at their stern for the first 3/4 of the run. Slowly chipping away at their lead. When they gybed, so did we, ours was a little better and we gained more again. They did beat us across the line, but only by 20 seconds or so. That gave us a second place in the last race and a regatta win for Don!

Come to find out that we actually ended up winning PHRF overall. That gives Don a nice shinny new Corum watch!

Thanks to the crew who did a bang up job all weekend long. Thanks to Don Jr. who drove each race and did a fantastic job. But most of all thanks to Don Sr. who has given us a great toy to play with!

The Chicago to Mac race is starting to get more interesting!
Cheers

Tac

PS I will try to find a couple pictures online to post that show the boat.

What it should be like!

This is what 24 TP 52's looked like all lined up and ready for the next of racing! We really need some of this going on over on this side of the pond!

I have been signed on to Blue Nights the Swan 45 for the upcoming Swan 45 Pre-Worlds and Worlds. I will be sure to report from that.

Check out the new contact info on the top right corner.
Cheers
Tac

Anticipate the Shift!

Well after about a year and half of talking, negotiating and planning it is now official. I have signed my life away! I am now a proud member the Quantum Sail Design Team!

I will get more into this in the next few days but I just wanted to get this out there. For now my email address will remain the same and so do all my contact numbers.

This has been a long time coming and I am really excited about the new relationship. I look forward to representing Quantum Sails, they have a great product, great technology and they have a lot of serious plans to change the sailmaking world!

I want to thank Wally Cross and Farley Fontenot for working so hard to get this done. I also need to thank my parents and family for their understanding in this matter. While it is not a perfect family scenario they have supported me 100% in this new direction that I am heading.

As I mentioned more will follow with new email address and any other important information. Thanks again to all that made this happen and I look forward to this change.
Cheers

Tac Boston

Its been a while since I updated

As you can imagine this time of year is quite busy for us in the sailmaking industry! People wanted their sails that we built or serviced over the winter. Other people that have been driving around all winter with the torn sail in the truck, finally get off the sideline and bring it in. Oh yeah of course they bring it in the day before the boat launches :)

Here in Holland we have already sailed 3 Wednesday night races. I have had the please of sailing with Ted Etheridge on his Melges 32 Drumbeat. We have had a very good start to the season. The racing has been light, cold and very fun.

I am sure that we are giving our fellow races a bit of a hard time and I would expect soon to be hearing the rumblings of rating woes! We currently have a 2-1-1. The two first were by corrected times of 10 mins and 16 mins! The Melges loves light air and flat water and that is what we have had.

In the first race we sailed very well compiling a substantial lead at the first leeward mark, until a Mexican douse went pear shaped and we slided the Runner open quite bad, (see picture), then we find out that our VMG Asail is sitting on the dock! So we ended up having to sail the boat jib and main! Not fast at all I can tell you. So we just managed to hold off the Tripp 40 boat for boat and finished second to them corrected.

Needless to say the bow man got some good ribbing over the next week or so and we have yet to leave a sail on the dock!

I also traveled over to Detroit to do a day of coaching Mother's Day weekend. I was asked by Rod Spearin and his crew on Carerra his Beneteau 36.7. What a great day of sailing and we worked hard on training a couple new crew and a I put them through a ton of tacks and gybes and we got them sailing much better. Hopefully they will be ready to take on the Beneteau fleet for the Detroit NOOD.

I always enjoy sailing with new people and new teams. It gives me a chance to broaden my skills and develop better teaching tools. Each team is different and we need to come up with different solutions to the same issues. Quite fun really.

Coaching is one area that I do not think sailors use enough. For a small amount of money they can hire a good solid coach to help they get the boat up speed, shake off winter dust or help them further develop crew or even just get better at certain maneuvers.

Anyway, I just wanted to touch base real quick. We have a pile of regattas coming up. I am sailing the Detroit NOOD on Merlin the J-120. I just got signed on there. Then I am off to Cleveland for a J 22 regatta, Chicago NOOD on the NM 43 Tyrant, back to Chicago for Cleveland Race Week again on the 22. Then fingers crossed it is off to the Solent and the Swam 45 Worlds!

I will keep you posted. Also hoping that my buddy Paul gets us some more news on the Glory TP 52 Season.
Cheers
Tac

Palma Vela 2007

Med Cup 2007 – Glory’s tune-up at the Palma Vela Regatta, April 13 – April 23

With only two jumps to make it from Seattle to Palma, this trip was overseas was not so bad other than having to fly through London – always a torture test, it reinforces why everyone should take any opportunity they have to go through Amsterdam when possible. Arriving in Palma the boat team had done a great job and the boat was in near race ready trim (all TP52 were racing out of 2007 trim with non-validated certificates for Palma) allowing us to focus on getting the team up to speed. Although the boat was sea trialed in New Zealand by many of our key players, this was the first opportunity for our regular crew to really put the boat through its paces.

The Palma Vela event (http://www.palmavela.com) was a perfect opportunity for us to spend some time in the bay of Palma (2 of the 5 events are held here) before the MED CUP kicks off and for us to have extended time to tune and then race against several of the established teams and last year’s overall MED CUP winner Mean Machine. There were several similar J/V designs in the event including Anonimo, who we competed against in Sardinia and then both Christabella and Mean Machine who were very fast all last year. Glory, Anonimo and Mean Machine all came out of the same mold at Hakes Marine. By the end of the week we were very happy (by race 5) as it was quite frequently an all JV affair at the front of the fleet with our team consistently able to round marks with several of the top-flight teams.

Glory 2007

After much discussion, John chose to go with Rolf Vrolijk for the design for the new Glory – although the top 3 boats were all from different designers in 2006, overall as a team, we felt that the most top three results were coming from the J/V drawing-board given a near equal number of boats from the top designers. The change in design from the old Glory to the new 2007 design is leap of epic proportions – the overall feel, the way the boat jumps up surfs and the tremendous acceleration in the pre-starts and off the start line are all noticeable. Based on our early observations, we have built a stronger boat (structure-wise) for the Med conditions than many of our competitors that we have had the opportunity to look at last year but we will see if this is a handicap as the season goes on. It is forecasted that the events later in the series (Portugal and France) and then the 2007 Globals in Porto Cervo will be significantly windier than the first three events and the future sailing that John is looking to do in North America dictate that the boat have some real longevity and we have additional ring-frames for that bow that we can install when the boat comes to the US.

Additionally this year will also be a change for us as we move to a three spreader rig from Southern and North Sails provided by North NZ. As with many of the TP 52 campaigns we will be working with a sail designer who is doing work with an AC team and in combination with support from our local loft (Jack Christensen happened to be at the event in Palma) we have been quite happy to date with our technical support. We are very excited to be competing this year with what we consider to be a very competitive platform and it is up to each of us on the team to show up with the drive and attention to detail that rivals the pros we are racing against.

Observation 1 – No matter how much a custom boat costs, things will always break when you put a new boat through its paces – I learned this lesson many years ago and have always said “custom boats custom problems”. Well the first day of sailing was a good day with a firm 15 -20 knots of wind. Despite blowing a hydraulic fitting (supplier defect) in the first hour of sailing and the typical hydraulic oil mess below, we fixed it the best we could and continued to train. It was a good windy day to sort out the systems and other than the hydraulic head-stay issue and a set of cranky primary winch switches, we appeared to be in good shape.

On the second day of practice the gremlins took hold as we encountered multiple gear failures including magic wheel issues which damaged our jib adjustors and jib halyard lock issues which caused significant pain in our mark rounding operations (and caused multiple trips up the mast for our bow guy). These issues coupled with the increasing gear failures with our primary winches caused us quite a bit of work in the first few evenings as we continued to get Glory ready for its first race outing. Although using vacation time, participating in this event in reality turned into a 65 hour work week as we continued to push the boat’s new systems and attempted to make up a year of tuning to catch up to our race hardened competitors. In the end it was all worth it as we made significant gains day-to-day and moved up the leader-board on a per-race basis with scores of 9, 9, 5, 5, 5, 5, (overall we finished 7 of 9).

Observation 2 – Tweak, Tweak, Tweak – Last year’s winner Mean Machine showed up with significant changes this year, several of which we had identified with the designer and made to Glory while under construction. First was extending the deck at the transom to allow for a few additional inches of hiking platform while reaching and running. Second, was moving the mast back in the boat to improve the balance of the boat. The third change, which we did not do and are already looking at, is moving our tracks and enlarging the cutout in the cabin top to allow an even tighter sheeting angle. We sheeted well inside of 8-10 degrees all week and are looking for even tighter sheeting angles going forward in June. Finally, having now competed in one event in the 8-10 kt wind-range, the decision has been made to switch over from the wheels to a tiller for the remaining events in Spain. Seven of the nine new boats for 2007 are tiller driven and having sailed the Farr 40 with the tiller all winter we are confident that this is the right move.

Side Note: Links - A couple links to sites with updates on the upcoming med cup….

www.Medcup.org – Series Site

http://www.palmavela.es/ - Event site

www.buchanracing.com

Coming up later this week - recap of days one and two of competitive sailing at the Palma Vela.

Annapolis NOOD continued.

After flying home for a few days of work between our practice weekend and the regatta, we arrived to once again find very little wind. We arrived down at the boat around 8:30 AM and found the parking lot about empty? That kind of surprised us as we were anticipating the lot to be full of activity and we were hoping for some tuning partners.

We quickly launched anyway and left the dock to get some practice in, we still needed to work on tacking and dousing. We also wanted to look at the new mainsail that was just delivered. We again headed over towards the Navy's yacht yard and found two marks that we could sail between and started doing laps. Things were going very well and we had improved and things were looking good.

The morning breeze started to die after about an hour so we headed back to the dock and over to the Boat Yard again for lunch. After some good food we heading back to the dry sail lot and tried to find a dance partner for the afternoon. We finally got Curtis Florence and Suzie Wulff on the water to sail against us. As most know I have sailed more miles with Curtis then either of wish to admit, we have won many many races with each other. This is Curtis' first foray in boat ownership! C and S were quite smart in choosing Bill Abbott Jr. to drive Devil's Play for them.

So out we go and line up against another boat for the first time! We were quite happy as we had some great speed against them and pretty much controlled the tuning. It was nice to match up against them. Bill told us the boat looked great sailing the through the water and was very balanced looking. I have to agree, I really felt good about how we were going.

Devil's Play was having some winch issues, this was their first day on the water as well. C and S had bought this boat about 4 weeks before this event. So off to the dock and of course back to the Boat Yard!

Race Day #1, or should I say rain and no wind day #1! Nothing to report, other then the picture above.

Race Day #2, again the day arrived and the wind was nowhere to find. We sat out on the course for some time before the breeze finally came up and we were able to get some races off. In the first race, I had a shocker of a start, not a great first beat but on the run we were quite special. We passed about 7 boats on the run, by finding a bit of breeze down the middle and quite a good bit of pace. We continued to chip away at the fleet and ended the first race with a nice solid 6th place. (Of course out tuning partner ended up winning the race!)

Race 2 again saw a horrible start on my part, I was surprised how off my timing was on this boat. When I thought I was 1/2 lane off the line and the guy 1-1/5 boat lengths ahead was over, I was actually way late and he was perfect? So I need to work on this as well. We sailed OK this race, it was light and shifty and we missed a couple shifts up the first leg and again passed some boats downwind. We finished 16th. Not real bad but not where we felt we should have been.

Race 3, I do not remember! Must be the placing of 21 that causes temporary memory loss :)

We finished the day in 15th place about 7 points out of 11th. We were OK with that, we were knocking on the door of the top 10 and still had a day to go.

Sunday came with the breeze! What had been taking us an hour to sail to the course was taking like 15 mins, so we ended up out there really early. We took the sails down and just drifted around, watching the breeze and watching some of the boats that were sailing. We kind of formulated a plan and then after a hour of just watching we tuned the rig, raised the sails and went sailing.

The boat felt awesome! This was the first time we had sailed in any breeze at all and it was very very cool. We had some great wheels and make our race plan. Because I was starting so badly I decided to just play up near the boat so that I would have an escape if needed. Well I got a better start and was able to sail for a good hunk of time in clear air. We did want to get to the right so we tacked out and stuck to our plan. We sailed very well in this race and had great upwind speed, our downwind was not as good as we actually got passed by a couple boats. We were as high as 6th but finished with a 9th.

The last race of the regatta saw our best start. I could not believe the lane that I had! We were launched about mid way up the line and going very fast. Just about 2 mins after the start a big right shift came in and allowed Pete McChensey to leverage into a great spot on me and I could not live so we had to tack out. We sailed up the first 2/3 of the beat in the top 10 again. As we approached the top mark, we had three bad tacks in a row and got flushed out the back. This race was very disappointing as the wheels kind of came off. We lost a bunch of boats right at the finished and ended up with a 23rd.

That put us in 17th for the event, 4 points out of 13th. Not too bad, we accomplished our goal of a top half finished, but left us all disappointed because a much better result was easily achievable.

The team will get better and the results will improve. The most important thing was that Roger and Ned had a great weekend and had a ton of fun. Till next time

Tac

Preparation for the Annapolis NOOD

Ned Goodman, the happy owner!

So after several months of waiting and planning we finally arrived in Annapolis, the weekend before the event, to rig, practice and prepare for the NOOD regatta.

The boat was all that Scott said it would be! It has some cool little tricks that make sailing it easier and the bottom is just sweet. It really shows that the extra money up front gave us a much better boat then we were originally looking at.

As mentioned we flew in the weekend before the event to get the boat rigged, prep'ed and to sail it for the first time. This gave us a chance to apply a new type of "speed spooge" that I had not used yet. We applied the Holmenkol Sport Polish to clean the top sides and then applied the Aqua Speed process over that. It is very easy to apply the two coats needed and the result was quite impressive. (when we watched boats get pulled in front of us at the end of the regatta, they had a lot more cleaning to do then we did. All we needed to do was hose the boat off and it cleaned right up!)

Saturday brought light winds but just enough to go out and put a few laps around the fixed bouys. It was good to get the boat around the "race course" to see what we needed to do to improve. We broke the first session down during a great lunch at the Boat Yard and went back out to focus on those aspects that needed work. It was even lighter then in the morning so we only did a lap or two and then sailed in. What we learned we needed to work on was 1) tacking, I was doing a horrible job of getting the tacked. We needed Roger to hold the Jib back winded longer during the tack as well. This helps the boat roll and brings the bow down on the new board with less rudder movement from me. 2) Our douses needed serious work.

By the end of sailing on Saturday I was pretty convinced that I had never driven a boat before :) I was really surprised at how different the mechanics of tacking the 22 are compared to boats like the S2 7.9. For those who are not familar with the 22, the driver sits well forward of the traveler and all the controls are lead up to that position. So in a tack you need to roll the boat, work the traveler and of course get back behind the traveler, get to the new windward side and then move forward. It took me a while!

Sunday was again light and we worked very hard at getting the issues settled. We again found a couple marks that lined up and sailed a ton of ups and downs. We slowly started to get our douses figured and with each one they got better. The same was going for our tacks. I was still not doing them perfect but I was at least getting the hang of them. Roger sorting out the proper amount of back wind in the jib was a big key in that.

We started to notice that we were doing some things very well for a new team. Our sets were awesome. We quickly did a couple things that helps us with the sets. We put a mark on the spinnaker sheet at a point that if we cleat at that point on the beat, we can set the kite and the mark pre-sheets the sail in and allows the kite to fill.

Our grasp of where and when to sit in certain positions for boat feel and heel was quite good as well. We were starting to figure out how the boat liked to sailed, mind you that was with out even sailing against another boat! Our gybes we very good, I was convinced that Ned lied when he said he had never done bow before.

As Sunday ended and we needed to head to BWI for flights home, I was very happy with the base that we had laid down. I was confident that we would continue to improve tacking and dousing and we would be at least competent when the racing starting. Now who knew at this point whether we would be fast or not, that would have to wait till Thursday.

I will post more tomorrow on the actual regatta.
Cheers

Tac.

2006 World Team Race World Championships (Sardinia Cup) - Trans Pac 52 Med Style

I have always enjoyed racing box rule boats, IOR One-tons, IOR 50s, ILC 40s, MORC Maxis, it just doesn’t matter, I personally enjoy seeing the advancement of the box rule, so that fact that the TP52s that race in the Med appear to be distant cousins to the first generation of boats matters little to me. In the end the Sardinia Cup was a great opportunity for our team to trial one of the B&C designs built specifically for the Med, and for our owner to see if this is where he wanted to spend his sailing budget.

Trans Pac 52s in the Mediterranean

As I indicated last week, based on our promising performance in the Global Championships, we were invited to compete at the Rolex World Team Race Championships in Sardinia, Italy. Glory sailed a B&C TP52 under sponsorship of WOKITA.com, Gaastra, Balearia and Deporte Galego and I think that most of the team would agree that this boat held little in common with what we had been sailing. The evolution of the TP 52s for the Med began just after the Farr Gen 3 boats came out and while the Mediterranean IMS fleet was looking for the next stable rule (while the IMS 600 raters were quickly designing themselves to their death). Driven by a commitment from many of the principal IMS players including the King of Spain the feet had its first events with roughly 12 boats including Pisco Sour, Orlanda, and Balearia from B&C and Caixa Galicia, Atalanti, Bribon, from Farr and then the US Farr Gen 3 boats represented by Bambakou and Siemens (Sjambok). In the 2006 Sardinia Cup we sailed one of the 2005 B&C designs that were known for their high form stability, very thin keel section and the need to have their bow down to perform well. We struggled acclimating to this package in the short time we had available to get tuned, but it was good to see what designs were where in the design spectrum before looking to select a designer for 2007.

In 2006 the fleet grew to roughly 22 including new designs from B&C, Farr, Brenta, and the series winner (Mutua Madrilena MM) from Rolf Vrolijk. From 2005 to 2006 the fleet evolved dramatically from going fast in a straight line (I am oversimplifying here) to much more focus on holding a line upwind (since the fleet doubled in size) and keel and hull shape changes bore this out. However a strong showing from the 2005 Siemens (Patches – 2006 Globals winner) and continued bursts of speed from the 2005 B&C and Farr designs, it showed that you did not need the newest boat to win races.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 2007 as the level is upped even further than MM pushed it in 2006 and if the fleet can continue its rapid growth with a rumored 25 boats ready for 2007 and nine new teams hitting the water. However, 2007 will be critical year as the fleet appears to be hitting a plateau with key team such as Orlanda (2005), Atalanti (2006) and Rush (2006) appearing not to be returning this summer.

Observation 1: Spars - The standard for many years were two-spreadered Hall spars. Last year we used two different generations of the Hall spars and became quite familiar with tuning it but after attending the Sardinia Cup and looking closely at what was coming out of New Zealand, we had a big decision to make. At the time the 2006 boats were launched, several of the top programs – many of which were built in New Zealand sported three spreaders with minimum tube thickness. Much has been written about this in the press over the last year so I will not go too deep on this point, but the end story was that the top 2 finishers (Mutua MM and Warpath) both used three spreaders last year and a lot was made of this, especially when Warpaths sistership struggled with a two spreader rig (this is the presses observation and not mine). Hall Spars has come out with a new generation spar this year and it will be interesting to see how things play out over the course of the season as several team expecting to be competing for top honors have chosen spars for the US manufacturer. A lot of press was about Southern Spars masts and they indicated last year that in addition to three spreaders being more stable; their rig required less adjustment or tuning over a wider range of conditions. Additionally, with the increase in stability, the three-spreader mast was debated as to being superior due to achieving reduced windage through consequent reduction in mast section size and rigging dimensions despite a numerical increase in spreaders.

Observation 2: Sail inventory – The good the bad and the ugly – we saw all three over the course of the Globals and the Sardinia Cup. In my mind biggest source of evolution through 2006 and into 2007 is the transition between the Masthead Genoa and the Asymmetric A0 – we used our A0 spinnaker very effectively last year on Glory on the Swiftsure Offshore Classic but struggled with the Genoa/A0 combination during the Sardinia Cup distance race. We have been looking very closely at this set up over the last few months and we will need to do some serious testing in April and May if we are going to get it right come race day. One thing that really stood out looking at the sail programs while in Italy was the amount of money invested by several campaigns in proprietary sail designs. In my 30 years sailing and my 14 year sail making career it has always been apparent that there is an established pecking order driven by the amount of money you want to pay for a given service but this is overtly apparent in the TP 52 class where several of the top boats have a dedicated designer (often from AC syndicates) for headsails, another for mains, and another for downwind and reaching sails. At the same time, my observation is, that there are also several of the programs that use “off the shelf” designs, often with more durable membranes and fibers, fewer battens etc. Budget will drive the path that an individual program takes for their sail design and construction. Key in 2007 will be sail limitations and with the maximum sail allowance of only 25 sails allowed this year, designers and program managers will have their work cut out for them as they try to figure out how to stretch 25 sails over all 5 events - especially now that the last 2 venues of the 2007 Med Cup (and 2007 worlds in Sardinia) are slated to be sailed in significantly windier regions than the first 3 events.

Side Note: Sponsorship – everyone on our team was surprised at the level of sponsorship in the Med. What I think stands out the most for me, was the number of Farr 40s changing sponsorship between the Farr 40 European Championships and the Sardinia Cup. Teams were literally tearing 10-20 foot logos off the hulls and replacing them with the next batch of sponsors before the next event. We felt really lucky to be involved with a great group of companies with both WOKITA.Com and Gaastra showing us what could be done sponsor-wise in Europe.

Later this week – Overview of this summer’s sailing and the new boat.

2006 TP52 Globals - March 2006

So I will try to blast out three posts this week before I head for Palma Vela to set a baseline for my future writing. Today I will focus on the 2006 TP52 Globals and my experience sailing on the Gen 1 NM TP52, then later this week on Sardinia Cup and the Med focused B&C TP52s, and then a report with some general thoughts on this summer’s sailing.

Generation 1 Meets 2006

So to start with, Glory and the other generation 1 TP52s were designed specifically for the Transpac Race to Hawaii and racing down to Mexico. The design criteria stated that they should be lightweight and simple, with maximum headroom below decks. Glory/Yassou, Rosebud, Lightwave, and Flash all fall into the first generation of TP52s and when we arrived at the docks in Miami the differences between what we were sailing, and what the top teams were sailing, was quite stark (see above photo to illustrate the differences).

So the 2006 Globals started inauspiciously with us continuing to rig the boat and looking at our brand new Quantum sails on the way to the racecourse. What was a slow start gained momentum as we generally improved our gap to the top 3 boats in the inshore races from roughly 3 minutes behind to as little as 15 seconds by the end of the week. Overall I think that we could attribute a lot of that to getting use to the new modifications, improved boat-handling and a doing a better job of shifting gears downwind (between a more aggressive reaching mode or digging deep).

Observation 1: While the 2003 Glory was fast upwind/downwind with her new facelift, we continued to suffer from reduced form stability uphill, and we gave away a lot power reaching to the newer designs which sported much wider transoms. Additionally, we were a much different boat when it came to weight of hull and bulb and internal ballast. During the 12 months that we sailed this boat, we affectionately called Glory “the cruise-liner” because of her especially stout build, and we were amazed to see how light (and few ring frames) many of new builds had just 2 years later (driven by the Med conditions/designs). Despite the extra weight in the hull we were quick enough around the track, and especially later in the regatta we were often able to hold our own inshore against the newer designs such as the 2005 Farrs. When the Nelson 52 was sold to a new owners in Australia, we felt that we had really spent a lot of time getting the most out of the boat and that the design changes were worth it - especially when she went on to nearly win her class in the Sydney Hobart as WotYot.

Observation 2: Crew work/systems at this level is very refined – Well no kidding, anyone would all expect this but having started from scratch with the 2003 systems, we saw exponential improvement as we changed or upgraded. When designed, the sail handling systems for the generation 1 boats were designed to use one pedestal to drive the primaries, with drive shafts above deck for extra headroom below. They were set up with two halyard winches, two primaries linked to a single pedestal, two mainsheet winches with a full 2:1 German Admiral's Cup dedicated winch mainsheet system and then a set of secondary winches for in-line changes and peels (which we removed in the refit). This is a decent all-around system, but short on horsepower when compared with the latest generation bots when jibing and in prestart maneuvers. As time went by this proved less then optimal for round the cans racing and If I was going to single out one change that made the boat easier to sail – it would have to be the overdrive gears on the primaries. When we started jibing Glory we were taking around 18 seconds from initiating the jibe, furling the staysail, jibing the pole (disconnect and running it back until it cleared the hoisted staysail) and then completing the jibe, and unfurling. Over the course of the Globals we reduced that time to 8-11 seconds simply by changing technique for moving the pole and use of overdrive gearing.

Even with multiple pedestals linked together, the maximum power (according to Harken) a human can generate is 200rpm. That equates to a winch line speed of 94m/min. With the first gear of 1:1, the line speed is still too slow to get these big asymmetric around efficiently – the overdrive kit accelerates the winch by 2.4 times (Gear Ratio of 1:2.4). Now the overdrive turns the winch in first gear (1:1) and in overdrive (1:2.4), 1 turn of the handle generates 2.4 turns of the winch drum. This equates to a line speed of 225m/min. This means that you have to move quick keep up with the grinders as the rope is spit from the winch on the jibes - this is now a must have for asymmetrical kites (even the GP42 are sprouting pedestals) to get the kite around at blazing speeds.

Additionally while many of the 2005/2006 boats had two pedestals we only had a single one – so getting the main across in jibes was painful. Key through the jibes, was for our trimmers to be top-handling the guys back in addition to use of the pedestal (which is less than efficient). While the grinders were pulling the kite around in overdrive, they were also trying to muscle the guy back and relying on the offside trimmer to be on a handle to keep from bogging down mid-jibe. The 2005 and newer systems, and the new system on Glory, are able to lock all the pedestals (4 grinders) together to bring across the main, pull the kite around and the pole back at the same time. Additionally the majority of the boats this year will be using a pedestal to drive the cabin top winch to hoist the kite halyard (aiding in speed and smoothness).

Side Note:

One aspect of the TP52 class is that it requires distance racing in major events. Now I have never been a fan of offshore/distances racing since most of my memories are of slogging upwind on paper-thin one-tonners, through the night, riding the rail in the bow position. However, the distance race at the Globals had to be one of the most fun experiences of my sailing career as we crossed the Gulf Stream twice and were rewarded with blasting back from the Bahamas, at night, surfing at sustained high-teens and low-twenties under a near full moon. Bruce Nelson positioned us correctly on the first beat allowing us to round as one of the top three and then we spent the rest of the night chasing Beau Geste and the generation 3 Farr designs, while holding off Pegasus (who only just passed us an hour or so before the finish).

Later this week – Racing the Med TP52s in Italy