Blog....True Wind Style

Viper Sailing at Charleston Race Week!

2009-04-23T16:51:00.004-05:00

Good day All!

I am just back from Charleston Race Week, where I sat in a RIB each day, watching, coaching and rescuing flip flops, hats and missed beer cans. It is always an interesting time when you are at a regatta and not sailing. Can’t say that I totally enjoy it but you always learn a lot by watching how others are doing things.

I was there supporting Brad and his Viper 640 team of Lee Shuckerow and Eric Vigrass. This is the second event that we at Doyle Boston Sailmakers have done in the Viper fleet and it certainly will not be the last. If you remember I sailed the St. Pete NOOD regatta on the Viper.

For this event we brought a new set of sails, version 2.0 if you will, that we finished just minutes before jumping in the van and heading south. The new sails are a tweak from the sails that I used in St. Pete, we felt that we were close to what we wanted but we knew we had lots of room for tweaking and that is what we did. The new sails are very nice and people on the race course really noticed that Brad was there. The boys ended up 3^rd in the event, not to bad considering the boat they used is anywhere from 75-100 pounds heavier then the rest of them!

Anyway, I wanted to talk more about my observations from the ‘Coach boat’ then how the sails looked or how the team sailed. One thing that the Viper class does that I really like is the top to bottom flow of information between the best of the fleet to the new comers and folks back in the pack a ways. One of the reasons that I went down in the RIB was to help the fleet out with observations and give folks that were struggling some help to improve their position in the fleet and that in turn increases their FUN factor.

The fleet is very open to help and is often rather spongy in wanting more help and more info on how to get better and get up the fleet farther. The Viper fleet, lead by Class President Justin Scott try very hard to have a debrief at the end of the day where the top boats from the day talk about how they were set up, how they sailed the day and what they might have learned. All of this to immediately helps the fleet get better and have closer sailing. I truly wish that more fleets did this!

For this event we only were able to hold one such debrief, on Saturday night, but the information shared was helpful for the fleet and I noticed that many of the things that we talked that night suddenly appeared on more and more boats. This shows that these folks want to learn and want to get better. For the debrief Ethan Bixby and Ched Proctor from North Sails and myself answered many questions and gave tips of what we saw, how they sailed that day from Ethan and Ched’s perspective as they sailed. It is always interesting to see how other teams come to the same solution using a different path.

Some of the things that I noticed from the Coach Boat are as follows.

1) Not trimming the jib hard enough.

Many of top crew have the sail geometry/dynamics set up so that when they are fully sheeting in going upwind in most breeze the clew of the jib is either two blocked or very close.

2) Having the jib tack way up in the air

Setting up with the tack to high in the air changes a couple of important things. 1) It changes the whole geometry of the jib, sheeting and set up. 2) It opens the end plate effect up. You will find that if your tack is up much more then 2” you will be quickly running out of jib track and you will not be able to slide the lead back to open the leech and “out haul” the foot.

3) Not having the main halyard hoisted all the way

Again this changes the sheeting geometry of the sail. It makes your leech appear longer, which with the bridle will not allow you to trim your mainsheet hard enough. It also means that you will end up with big wrinkles in the luff of your sail as the Cunningham will bottom out.

4) Forgetting to pull the outhaul back on before heading upwind

In the big breeze on Friday and Sunday, I noticed many times that as boats rounded the leeward with their outhaul eased way out, they would not hold the lane with the boat that had the proper set up. The boat with the eased outhaul was always over powered, heeled too much and going a bit sideways. All bad when trying to hold that lane either in front or behind the boat around you.

5) Not sailing with enough Vang/GNAV in heavy air upwind.

What happens here is that when you ease the mainsheet in the big puffs your boom raises and actually powers the sail more! Not at all what you want when you are already over powered.

6) Not playing the jib sheet enough in big puffs

With most sport boats, you will find that as soon as the breeze is enough to start washing out/flogging the mainsail you need to start to ease the jib sheet as well. Otherwise the boat loses balance and the jib starts to pull the bow down away from the breeze. The good guys are adjusting the jib with each puff to keep the bow moving forward.

7) Sailing with the rig too loose in big breeze

Again this allows the sails to power back up and makes the boat heel more and go sideways.

8) Great big giant smiles on faces going downwind in 20 knots of breeze!

Only cure for this is to go back to sailing lead mines!

I would like to end this little blog session thanking the Viper fleet for welcoming us into the class with open arms, say thank you to the Charleston Circle 1 Race Committee for running an excellent regatta and thanking you all for paying to attention to this blog.

Cheers
Tac

Busy Times

2009-02-28T16:28:00.002-05:00

Good day all

Well it is a lovely day here in Chicago, for February that is :) I just got back to town after being over in Sarnia for a few days. While there I worked with Brad on a Rig Tune and Sail trim seminar that we jointly gave at South Port Sailing Club in Windsor on Wednesday night.

The talk went very well, all seemed to enjoy it and there was talk from a couple other local clubs about having do one for them. So we shall see. While neither of us are super comfortable doing them I think together we did a pretty good job. Brad is certainly getting more at least and much better at doing them.

I am going to have the loft get it up on the doyleboston.com website in the very near future for all of you to see if you wish. It covers pretty basic concepts on rig tune and sail shape to a bit more techie for those of you that are as well. I hope that you enjoy it and please feel free to contact either Brad or Myself to further discuss it.

On another, while I was in Sarnia I got a phone from John Baxter asking to be the jib trimmer on board Anema and Core the TP 52 from Annapolis. I will be joing the team on Wednesday for the Miami Race Week regatta. I am really looking forward to sailing on this boat, it is one of the old Platoon's from Germany. These boats are the top end of the sport right now and getting the opportunity to sail on one is really quite exciting!

I will try to keep you all posted and give you a bit of an insiders view of these awesome boats.

Anyway that is all that I know for now!

The above picture is the boat is Anema and Core at Key West. (I "borrowed" the picture from Tim Wilkes, thanks Tim)

Viper sailing!

2009-02-18T12:41:00.003-05:00

Good Morning all

Well I am back in Chicago after a great time sailing the Viper 640 at the St. Pete NOOD regatta. I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to talk about the Viper and the fleet.

I need to start by thanking a few people for making this happen. Harvey Barnes for allowing me to sail his boat, Mom and Dad for towing the thing down to St. Pete and my Bro for helping get it all sorted, rigged and sailing. Oh yeah and I guess I need to thank DC and Scott for sailing with me and having a great time while doing it. It was great to have part of the band back together.

Set Up.

What an easy to set up, launch and tune. This boat takes very little time to get the rig up and get your ass wet and sailing! Every thing makes sense, remember we had not really set one up before. We got the rig tuned, the boat wet and off for the first sail in very little time at all. Now that we know what we are doing it will be that much simpler in the future.

Sailing

This boat sails very nicely and is quite fast in the light air flat water that we had in St. Pete, but beware! This boat will be very wet in the breeze and bump! Yeah, back to dinghy days :) The boat has a very nice feel upwind, just a slight tug on the tiller when the boat is in the groove. Downwind in the light if you sail too flat you get a pretty wicked lee helm but that is sorted out as soon as you put about 5 degrees of heel in the boat, (either windward or leeward).

One thing that is a bit tricky to get used to is tacking and gybing. As you start to tack or gybe the bridal in the back of the bus inhibits how far you can turn the tiller, so it tacks more like an Etchells then a normal sport boat. So you have to be pretty agressive on the kinetics and time the last hard push or pull to flick the bow through and onto the next tack.

The Fleet

What a great group of people! I have known Brian Bennett, the man behind the Viper, for over 10 years and he has always been a great dude and worked very hard to make the Viper a great little boat. So it was no real surprise that a fleet that Brian is involved with would also be very warm and inviting to new sailors. I found that the class did their turns when they needed to, no real screaming and shouting at each other. Heck, there was even a couple very attractive "sailor chicks" in the fleet! That always makes a class better in my opinion :)

The racing was tight, too tight on the first beat for me, I had a duck turn into a goose! I just misjudged the duck and hit the very last possible spot you can hit on the stern of the a Viper. Sorry Harvey and Jonathon! Check is in the mail :)

The Races

I must say that I was very disapointed in the RC for this event. While I thought they did a great job of keeping us on the dock until the wind filled in. BUT, we always sailed an course that finished us upwind. This wastes so much time on the water. We are here to race so why not race us. Finishing upwind means that we averaged about 60 mins between our finish time and our start time. With the size of this boat that should almost be enough time to get two more races off!

I just don't understand why we did this. Maybe one of you will be able to fill me in on this but it just does not make sense.

Final thoughts.

I look forward to sailing the Viper more and in fact have at least one customer that is really keen on the boat and I am hoping to be introducing the Viper to another potential client if we can find one to Charter for Charleston. That event has over 35 entries at this point! Can't wait to sail in that fleet.

If I can't find a boat for my client I will join my Brad and sail with him for that event.

I wish that I had a picture or two of us sailing but they have not posted any yet so I will just add a random shot of a cool boat :)
Cheers for now.

Tac

What's Next?

2009-02-06T22:01:00.002-05:00

Hey All

Just wanted to keep in touch and let you all know what is happening in this little world of mine! I got news yesterday that I will be sailing a Viper 640 at the St. Pete NOOD regatta next weekend. I am pretty excited about this. I have my old buddies Dan Cheresh and Scott McNeill sailing with me. Originally we were going to sail our Ultimate 20 but when the Viper chance came up we switched over.

This will lead right into the new job. As most of my close friends know I am going to be heading back to Point Edward and working for the family loft sail loft there. I am really excited about the actual job, still a bit bummed out that I am leaving Chicago I really love it here but home is as they say always where the heart is.

I will be working once again with my Dad and brother, this should be a really great team and we all look forward to taking the loft to the next level. One of the first steps is to start a sail development program in the Viper 640 fleet. So not only will I be sailing the Viper for the first time in 10+ years, we will testing the first set of Doyle Boston Sails. (Man is it weird to say that Doyle Boston again! Who would have thought?)

Anyway, I hope to take some pictures and video of the event and sail tuning on Thursday next week. I will post them as they happen.

Well that is all that I know!

Update post Key Weird!

2009-01-28T17:28:00.003-05:00

Good day all!

Well I did not do a very good job of keeping this updated during Race Week, but to be quite honest it is tough to write each day when you have gotten your ass handed to you that day :) I guess it is something that I will have to get better at :) I guess the moral of the story is not to get your ass kicked :)

Anyway I had a lot of fun sailing in the Melges 24 class with the boys on Cujo. We had a tough regatta but never let it leave the boat. Which I feel is really important. We just did not have it upwind last week and nothing seemed to worked. Shit, I even drove a couple legs!

Following KW we did a Match race event down there on Saturday and Sunday. The Cujo team changed a bit for that event as we added Mike Buckley as the driver and Bob Clark as the Spinnaker trimmer. We had a much better event losing to Charlie Enright in the Finals.

Well I am back in the Cold of Chicago and working hard on finalizing what is up next for me. I will be letting you all know by next week I think. It is a done deal in my head and now I just have to figure out the exit strategy for here and the entry time for what is next. I am looking forward to the next phase in my life and I am hoping that it will be all that those involved think it will be.

Anyway, it will be a bit weird this weekend as it is the Chicago Strictly Sail show here and I will not be in a booth this year. I think that I am going to stop by the show for a bit on a couple of the days, just to be there and see many people that I am sure will be looking for me at my old job!

I can tell you that if any of you are looking for good sails at a good deal just let me know. As you all know I have many contacts in the sailing world and I will be able to beat most prices out there, especially those of my old job :) So hit me up for a sail quote! I can promise you that the sails that I will sell you will be of the highest quality and be great sails.

Anyway, I will be talking to you all next week, I hope that you have a great weekend and enjoy the show for those who are going.

PS here are a couple shots from Sara Proctor. She shot these great shots in KW. Check her out.

Just a quick note

2009-01-11T23:02:00.005-05:00

Well as some of may have heard I am no long with Quantum Sails effective Jan 1 of this year. This was not my choice and unfortunately the hard work and effort that I put in here in Chicago will go for not and I am going to have to start over again. What is one more time?

I want to thank the many people with in Quantum that I worked with on a regular basis, peeps like Wally Cross, Bob Clark, Farley Fontenot, Scott Nixon and Bary Gately. These are great people and it was a pleasure working with you guys and thanks for all that you did.

There will be some good news coming in the very near future that will surprise some and be exciting for others. For me it will allow me to take the last 10 years of my experience to great use and will really cement the future in a great way.

I am getting ready to attend Key West Race Week, I have been signed on to sail on board Cujo a Melges 24 team from Detroit. I am really looking to this regatta as I have not been to KW in a few years and I have not sailed the 24 in a little while either.

We are then going to participate in the first of the Chicago Match Race Center's regatta. This will be sailed in M 24's down there for their first event. Then the regattas will shift back North to Chicago and 8 new Tom 28's that Don Wilson has bought to set up this new center.

The winter of sailing is looking really promissing, I am planning on attending the St. Pete NOOD, J 22 Mid Winters, Charleston Race Week, Annapolis NOOD and hopefully a trip to Uruguay to sail on the exciting new Soto 40, (That is the ride in the picture). If I go down it is to go check the boat for a client who is very serious about picking one up.

So hopefully all of this plus the plan for the future will keep me busy and start to let all the peices fall into place.

As I am my own company again I will try to do a much better job of keeping this up to date. I will also try to get something on here each day of Key West and the Match Event after.
Cheers for now!

Tac

Fall in Chicago! Sorry its been a while.

2008-10-07T12:08:00.003-05:00

Good Morning Chicago!

Well it looks like Fall has finally reared its chilly head. What a great sailing season we had here in Chicago! It is amazing to think how many great events this beautiful water front hosted this summer.

I am sure that I will forget a couple but the partial list includes, the Colors Regatta, NOOD, Etchells World Championships, the 100th Race to Mac, the Verve Cups, the T-10 NA's, the Beneteau 36.7 NA's, Windy City Match Race and this last weekend the US Sailing Offshore Sailing Championships.

For our first summer here in the Chicago market we certainly made out presence known with great results in those events. I would like to personally congratulate all of the class and event winners on a great summer of sailing.

We are starting to get into our specials, I will be back with the exact plan in a day or so, but I can tell that this might just be the most innovative incentive plan that I have been involved with!

We are also here for any fall service that your existing sail may need. A little preventative maintenance over the winter goes a long way to ensure that your sails with not have catastrophic issues next season.

I hope that you are able to enjoy the great wind that the fall usually brings! Bundle and enjoy the last few weeks of sailing!
Cheers

Tac Boston

WOW where has the time gone?

2007-12-28T14:29:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-23T09:28:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-19T03:38:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-15T13:52:00.001-05:00

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!

2007-10-14T18:30:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-10-06T08:10:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-09-23T04:58:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-09-21T01:42:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-20T02:10:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-09-19T04:01:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-08-27T14:56:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-08-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-11T07:47:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-05T13:51:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-07-03T13:52:00.000-05:00

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

2007-07-02T17:38:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-07-01T16:12:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-18T13:18:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-06-12T12:16:00.001-05:00

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!

2007-05-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-22T12:46:00.001-05:00

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

2007-05-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-05-02T09:28:00.000-05:00

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

2007-05-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-04-12T09:31:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-04-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-04-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

So how did Team Glory come together and what is our outlook for the 2007 Med Cup?

Over the last 18 months I started bumping into old friends while on the sailing circuit who wanted to know what was going on with the TP52 Glory and what it was like trying to get a boat and team to the Med Cup. Well, with Tac’s help I hope to consolidate all those mails and just blog a couple times a week, starting today, and ending at the TP 52 Globals in September. Now I am far from an expert on the pro sailing scene but friends have commented that my observations over the last 18 months have provided some good insight for those of us not getting paid to race.

Well preparation for the 2007 MedCup began in November of 2005 when John purchased a 2003 generation TP52 (Yassou) and immediately sent her to be modified to be as competitive as possible with the 2006 fleet at the Global Championships. While Yassou was under the knife, Team Glory chartered the 2005 Med Cup runner-up (2005 Farr TP52) and raced it in howling conditions at Key West Race Week. All I will say about this experience is that this is when the team decided we would never race a Med TP52 off shore without a significant work-up (and led to many protracted discussions on the merit of bow ring-frames). Any future Glory would be built with provisions that would ensure that it would be able to get to Hawaii and back.

After 5 weeks of non-stop work by Goetz Boatworks (www.goetzboats.com) Glory emerged from the shed with a new bow and stern (designed by Bruce Nelson), reworked foil and significantly stiffened spar. After a few days of ticking off critical jobs on the boat we put on the new sail inventory by Quantum and hit the water. As our first class event, we did not find our stride at the Globals until midway through the event, but better late than never. The bright point was that our team gelled and had led the offshore race and last two inshore races of the series.

Based on the promising performance in the Global Championships, we were invited to compete at the Rolex World Team Race Championships in Sardinia, Italy. After rushing Glory back to the Pacific Northwest to compete in the Swiftsure Offshore Classic Yacht Race (which we won overall) we jumped a flight to Europe to represent the United States in the TP52 class. Team Glory sailed a B&C TP52 under sponsorship of WOKITA.com, Gaastra, Balearia and Deporte Galego but unfortunately struggled with acclimating to the boat, the sails and the racecourse after losing 3+ days of practice to weather and broken equipment.

Although we are focused on running a Corinthian effort this year, it absolutely does not mean that we are going to a gunfight unarmed. Our team is primarily NW based with the addition of two sailors from Australia and Spain and includes Olympic sailing medals, World, North American, and US National Championships and Hobart, SORC and Key West winners.

Overall Team Glory expects to contend for individual race and event wins and compete for the season’s overall Corinthian trophy.

Next – Observations and insights from the TP Globals and Sardinia Cup.

Special Guest Star

2007-04-04T10:38:00.000-05:00

Over the next few weeks, a good buddy of mine will be posting on this blog. Paul Andrepont used to work for the family back in the day and is quite a good sailor. Paul now lives out in Seattle where he has been sailing with the Buchan Racing team on various racers named Glory. In the last 18 months Team Glory has been involved in some really cool racing. The owner bought Yassou the NM Transpac 52 and totally modified it to make it competitive with the new boats. Glory sailed the 2006 Transpac 52 Intergalactics and finished quite well considering age of the boat and the relative lack of big boat experience.

Glory then chartered another TP 52 for an event in the med last summer and at that point the owner John Buchan decided to build a new boat for the 2007 season. They quickly settle on JV and built the 3rd boat out of the Mean Machine Mold at Hakes Marine. Mean Machine for those who do not know won the entire MEDCUP season last year!

Anyway the team is quite serious about making a run at the MEDCUP this season and in doing so have crossed trained in the MUMM 30 fleet, sailing the Worlds and also in the Farr 40, having bought the former Mean Machine Farr 40.

They have built a beautiful new TP 52 that is about to make her debut at the Palma Vela regatta over the next couple weeks. Paul will be doing some blogging from the event on the trials and tribulations of ramping up a brand new TP 52 against some of the top finishers last season. Looking at the entry list, I see Mean Machine will be there so they will have their full.

Team Glory are a bunch of good dudes and are putting a full 100% effort into winning the 2007 MEDCUP. I look forward to reading what Paul has to say as much as the rest of you.

Good luck to Glory for the 2007 Season.
Cheers

Tac

Tech trick of the week

2007-03-30T12:20:00.000-05:00

Good day all. The UPS man was just here and dropped off the Cabin top, Primary and Mainsheet winches from the NM 43 Tyrant.

You see we had shipped them off to Oyster Bay Boat Shop to have the winches refinished. They are all Lewmar drums that are about 10 years old and the finish had turned very slick. We would have to totally stack the winches with wraps in order to get any grip at all.

Bam Miller from Oyster Bay has developed a way of stripping the drum down to Aluminum and "regripping" them and then reapplying the Anodizing finish.

So I felt like a kid at Christmas as I ripped opened the box and the bubble wrap of one of the drums. They look awesome! they are a little darker in color, they look more like Harken winches now and the grip feels real nice.

I will write up another report after we use them the first time, but from what I have seen any one with slick drums needs to seriously consider this option.

The cost is about $500 a drum and the process takes just over 4 weeks to complete.

For more information on this give me a ring or an email and I will happy to help you in anyway I can.

Cheers

Tac

tac (at) truewindracing.com
616-396-3030

Slam ATS Spray Top

2007-03-19T13:01:00.000-05:00

For this weeks Slam Featured Kit, I have picked the ATS Spray Top. On Drumbeat 32, the Melges 32 owned here in Holland by Ted Etheridge, we have a full set of the Spray Tops and the crew are quite happy with the tops.

The top is light, airy and very easy to care for. The fit is quite nice as well, I have sailed with every brand splash top you can imagine and I am very happy with the fit and performance of this top.

They come in either Red or Blue. We have the Red top for the Melges 32 but are going to order a set of Blue for the J-22. I have seen the blue and it is very electric!

Anyway, they retail for $124.98

Is there a sight more sad then this?

2007-03-16T18:50:00.001-05:00

Apparently a micro burst ripped through a yard in Palm Beach Florida earlier today and it reeked the havoc you see!

The boat on the left is Rima the CM/Farr 60 and the boat on the right is Harrier, which I believe is a RP 77, (ex Pegasus). This is a truly sad sight as both boats are likely a right off!

Nothing worse then seeing pretty boats off their cradle and on the hard literally.

Bummer in the worst degree.

PS I got this picture off of Sailing Anarchy.

Slam Gear of the Week

2007-03-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

This Weeks Slam Item of the Week is the Summer Sailing Jacket. This is a nice light weight water resistent jacket that is perfect for the Spring and Fall sailing days when a Splash top or a full Oily jacket is too heavy and cumbersome.

I have one of these jackets and have used it a fair bit. It blocks the wind out and with a mid layer under it is plenty of warm in the brisk spring and fall conditions. It also is not too hot for those chillier summer nights on the town.

These boots retail for $ 78.95. They come in several sizes and you have Red, Dark Blue, Yellow, Lt. Blue, Black, Silver and Orange. (I have the silver jacket and it is real sharp. Good for Sponsor logos and boat graphics!)

Owners these are the perfect team jackets for the crew. Call and order a full kit for the crew, we can even arrange the stitching!

Cheers,

Tac

PS Again call with an order, mention the blog and get a bit of discount!

True Wind Racing Inc
87F Aniline Ave Holland MI
49424
616-396-3030
tac(at)truewindracing.com

Culebra International Regatta!

2007-03-13T13:07:00.000-05:00

What an awesome venue for racing! The island is totally beautiful and the people are amazingly friendly and go out of their way to make you feel welcome on their island.

As I mentioned last week, I was signed on to sail aboard the RP 44 Storm for this event. What a great bunch of guys led by Trini Peter Peake. It was great to see my old friend Philip Barnard who is the crew boss and tactictian on Storm for the CORT Series this season.

We got out on the water for a short sail on Friday to get some bugs worked out. The boat is quite nice to sail and is very fast. We were the fastest boat there and scratch boat by a long while. We ended up losing to a well sailed Megles 24, how the hell do you cover a boat that you are finishing more then 9 minutes ahead of?

Anyway we did three windward leeward races on Saturday in 13-17 knots of breeze the sun was shining and the waves were big enough for us to have a couple real nice rides downwind! This boat is very slippery downwind and a lot of fun to sail. We had a couple crew snafu's but that is to be expected when you had 7 of the 11 crew on the boat for the first time.

Some good partying on Saturday night was now due and the boys did not disappoint! If you are ever in Culebra check out El Bate after midnight! It will not disappoint :)

Sunday morning arrived with a little less wind and a lot more sun! The RC decided to the send the big boats on the around the island race. What a beautiful venue this is. There some some awesome views along the coast line of this tiny island. The white sand of Flamingo beach is gorgeous and certainly made more of us wish we could have been on the beach for some of the day.

We ended up finishing 4th in that race but had enough of a point lead on the third place to hold our second place OA for the event.

We again hit the bars for Sunday night and did the team proud again!

I would recommend this regatta to anyone that is interested in some really nice sailing, beautiful women and great parties. I would however advise that you sail a boat more in line with what the fleet has to offer. Bringing a 44'er to a small boat regatta is not what I would do again. I know that Peter was wishing he had brought his Henderson 30 result wise.

Anyway, it looks like BVI spring regatta is the next on the ticket for Storm. I will know by the end of the week if I am on or not.

The picture here is Storm on the mooring in front of the house that we had. Not a bad way to go sailing each day!
Cheers

Tac

A long cold week

2007-03-02T14:53:00.000-05:00

Hey All

Sorry not to have posted much this week, just can't seem to find the motivation! The weather is freaking awfull and not really condusive to talking sailing.

But there is a bright side! One week from today I will be sailing in the beautiful waters off of Culebra! That is a small island off the North East coast of Puerto Rico! I have been signed on to trim the mainsail aboard Storm the R/P 44. I am looking forward to that as I will be sailing again with my good buddy Phil and we also have Juggy coming down for the ride as well.

I will try to get some pictures of the sailing, partying and boats that will inhabit this regatta. Here is the link to the regatta!

http://www.culebrainternationalregatta.com/

I hope that you all have a great weekend!

The Daily double!

2007-02-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I posted that an old friend of mine had won the DN Iceboat Worlds, well Matt finished the week off by winning the DN North American's!

I am not 100% sure but I think that Matt has won this regatta before but obviously not a day or two after winning the Worlds!

Congrats to the new Champ! Great Job Matt.
Cheers

Tac

USA 1464, in the bag!

2007-02-24T14:46:00.000-05:00

Today Ned and Roger flew to Annapolis to check out the boat and give Scott the check to transfer ownership over to Ned. We decided to leave the boat in Annapolis and not bother practicing in Cleveland before the NOOD.

We are now scheduled to fly out for the weekend before the NOOD and sail the boat, get it sorted and put our best foot forward. I have booked my flights and ready to rock. Can we move the clock forward to April 20th yet!

I have got to say that this is the most ramped up I have been to go sailing in a long time. I am really excited about meeting the people of the J 22 class and also seeing old friends that I do know from that fleet.

Anyway that is all from me this week. It has been a shitty week but this has helped to get throught the crap and make a good vibe going into next week.

Later!
Tac

Congrats to an old Friend!

2007-02-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

It has been some time since I sat my fat ass in the cockpit of a DN, but I am sure that the last time I did, I sailed against Matt Struble. Matt is a few years younger then I am and a truly fantastic sailor. He has won big events in everything from the Worrell 1000 to now the DN Ice boat Worlds!

Matt is a super nice dude and has always been a great competitor. I am very happy to see that he has won the Worlds in the fleet that he has continued to sail in.

I just wish the DN class would get their shit together a little bit on the Web side of life. The results are nowhere to be found and there does not appear to be much in terms of pictures. I did find two shots and that is really it. If any of you that check my site out have a link to the full results and to some pictures please shoot me a comment with a link.

Congrats again Matt!

(the above picture is one of Ron Sherry about to launch off the starting line. Ron finished 4th)

Sailing in the NOOD

2007-02-17T18:30:00.000-05:00

Hey All

I have been trying to get on line for two days to just give a bit of an update, but the wireless at the hotel sucks!

We have had two good days of sailing. Yesterday was cold as....miserable actually but today the sun came out and it was a little lighter breeze wise so it was a much more comfortable day.

We on Frequent Flyer have had a good event so far. We have a string of first. Some not as easy as others. We have been lucky a few times, fast at times and just plain out crew worked most of the times.

We have a nice 12 point lead I think, I have not seen the results today, so we have to sail tomorrow. Which sucks as they are calling for cold and big big breeze tomorrow.

Again the NOOD regatta format is the best of the value sailing you can get. It was a good party last night for most and good times had by all.

Yesterday saw some awesome high speed wipeouts by ALL the teams, in the Melges 32 fleet. Those boats seem pretty fast but very twitchy!

Anyway, if we keep the string alive we will win the family competition with my brother as he had two shockers today. The first race he was 11th and the last race he finished 3rd, I think. So as long as we keep out shit together tomorrow we will have the family bragging rites as well.

I will try to get some pictures from my sister to post in the near future.

Cheers
Tac

St. Pete NOOD

2007-02-12T16:35:00.000-05:00

There used to be a saying about St. Pete. "the land of the newly wed and the nearly dead!", well that certainly could be kind of true when you look at the fleets are being sailed at this great event.

BTW, I truly believe that the NOOD regattas are the best value in all of sailing! While Key West, Miami Race Week, Block Island and several other high end regattas, all offer great sailing the NOOD regattas are the best bang for your buck in sailing PERIOD! For the money you spend on one regatta entry fee at the big regattas you can almost do the entire NOOD curcuit.

Anyway off the soap box back to the St. Pete NOOD regatta 07. I was just asked by my Dad to sail with him at this event. He had a crew bail due to work committments, as mentioned in my previous post I am quite stoked about that. But as I was looking over the entry list something stuck out like a well, a J-105 bow sprit. The overwhelming theme in this regatta is 15-20 year old designs making an incredible comeback in the sport.

Just look at the list.

13 Wavelength 24's
23 J-24's
10 S2 7.9's
14 Ulitimate 20's
6 Olsen 30's
6 Tripp 26's
7 T-10's
6 Hobie 33's (as class that I won a NA's in back in 1985!)
8 Sonars, (the class that got me my World Championship trophy)

That is 93 of the 199 boats that are listed as entries. I did not even touch on the Corsair boats, (I am not sure when they first came out), or start the arguement as to whether the J-105, J-80 or Melges 24 should qualify for this topic or not. Shit even the Melges 32 is really a 10 year old boat! So I guess nothing is really new in the world.

But I think much like the NOOD regatta platform the boats that I listed above give their owners great bang for the buck, a good structured OD support system, some great sailors and most of all a boat that sail very well. Well OK, (in my opinion), the J 24 does not fit that last bill, but there are 23 of them there!

Anyway, for all of you that are driving from the Michigan, IL, Ohio and Upstate New York areas, including my family, Please drive safe and keep the boats on the trailers behind you and the wheels on the road! Are we about ready for this white shit stop falling?

I know that I am. See all you NOOD'ers in St.Pete!
Cheers,

Tac

St. Pete NOOD

2007-02-08T12:13:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like I will be sailing in the St. Pete NOOD regatta after all. I just got the call up from my Dad and I will be joining his crew for the event. I am very stoked up about sailing with him again.

It will be a good event it looks like there are 10 S2 7.9's entered at this time. Will be some good competition and a lot of fun sailing in that class again. I think my whole family is going down to hang out, Mom has the power boat so I will have some pictures that I can post after the event.

It is good to see all the older OD classes represented at this event. I will go into that a little later on. But suffice to say Old School is in the House!

Cheers,
Tac

Boat Show rerun

2007-02-06T13:17:00.000-05:00

Well I did in fact attend the Strictly Sail show on Friday and for a little while on Saturday evening. Friday I spent most of my time walking around talking to industry friends and bumping into a few of my customers and friends. I spent some time around the Ultimate 20 booth as my brother Brad was there, that little boat still gets a bunch of people coming by to ask about it and check it out.

I did not spend much time at all looking at boats, in fact I only really looked at three closely at all. Brad and I went up and into the Ultimate 24 that was there. That is an interesting little guy for sure. It will be interesting to see what likes when rebranded the Antrim 25. Good move? Time will tell.

We also went by and looked briefly at the Beneteau 36.7 to see what was up with that class. This boat has a shit load of participation in many several areas including Chicago that has over 25 of these racer/cruisers. We then stopped by the Melges 32 to see the changes that they have had to make to the boat in order to get the motors to work all the time. See picture. Boy it looks more like a Henderson 30 all the time!

On Saturday I went back to the show with two good friends, Doug and Janet Nickel and my beautifull girlfriend, Karyn. (it was her first jaunt to a boat show). We looked around a bit more, ran into more friends and had a couple beers!

Doug and I ventured onto the Bavaria 37 to have a look see. I was very impressed with the wood work and the interior layout of this boat. I was not at all impressed with the steering area or the deck layout. The Nav station was quite nicely laid out and had a good amount of space for computers and read outs. Nice job there.

We then went up to check out the Beneteau 49 but the line was huge so we went onto a 43??? Can't remember the actual model. Still a bad steering layout, on boats this big lets just all agree to put two wheels on them and call it done! So off to the belly of the beast we go. I must say that this boat was not nearly as impressive as the Bravaria.

We then stayed up and waiting in line for the 49. That boats cockpit layout was much better then the other two boats. It has the twin wheels that a good cruising boat should have. I do think that having a mid boom traveller on a cruising boat is a bad idea. They do nothing for sail control and you cannot get proper sheeting most of the time upwind. (while I understand that I look at this from a more racing background, but it does not make sence). I would much rather see a single point sheeting system back by the wheels or even a Hunter "spoiler" where the traveler is up over your head. Just makes more sense to me.

This boat had a beautifull double cabin layout, perfect for a couple that wants to sail/cruise only with one other couple. The aft cabin was awesome! that is where I would park my fat ass while cruising. I was again disappointed in the Beneteau Nav station, you all really need to take a look at the Bavaria, it was far superior. (Kind of wish I would have taken some pictures.)

Anyway, having talked to friends in the industry, I think that the show was again a success for all that were there. I think that I got a few leads that will be helpfull as well!

I will comment more on gear a little later.
Cheers,
Tac

Strictly Sail Chicago

2007-02-01T11:51:00.000-05:00

So Tomorrow will be a bit of a weird day for me. I am going to Chicago to walk around the boat show and for the first time, I will have zero affiliation there. It will be a bit strange I am sure.

I have been doing my own thing since June and it will be interesting to see how the show is going and if I can bump into enough people there to maybe pull a little business out of the show without having a booth there.

I am also going to be meeting with friends in the industry to get caught up and just see some faces that I have not seen in a while. The one thing that they all say is "lets get together for a beer"........man, if I have a beer with each of them, I might just be shit faced by the time I leave! Good think Chitown has a good public transport system! No drinking and driving here.

Anyway, I will try to post a little blurb about the show and what I see, what I like and of course what I do not like.

Thanks for stopping by! Here is a funny for the day!

Saving One Design

2007-01-30T14:18:00.000-05:00

Hey All,

So today I got some really good news. I am for sure going J-22 sailing this coming season. I will be teamed up with Roger Gamache a good friend of mine and Ned Goodman a good friend of Roger's.

Ned is one of the people that has a Ultimate 20 on order with Bill Abbott, but since the Abbott site is still in a bit of limbo after a serious fire, Ned has decided to buy a J-22 in the interem and go sailing. We have found a great boat, in fact it is Scott Nixon's personal boat, (it's the one in the picture!) and we will have no excuses on the hardware front! It will be up the three of us to get our shit together and make this work.

I titled this Saving One Design after a short posting by my buddy Wally Cross of www.destinationonedesign.com. Wally was talking about finding old OD boats and re-announcing them to his clientel. When it became apparten the Ned, Roger and I would not be sailing a brand new U-20 this season I started looking around for a boat that the three of could sail, that Ned could easily sail at home and also a boat that has good regatta participation and with good fun people!

Well Ned nears lives near Cleveland and there is an excellent J-22 fleet there that he can play in during week with some of his other sailing buddies, he can take the family sailing anytime he wants and it gives us a chance to sail in what will be a 60+ boat J-22 North American regatta that is in Cleveland this season.

We get the added bonus that by buying a good boat like 1464 it will hold its resail value for when and if the U-20 comes to fruition. For me personally the deal allows me to drive some of the events! Which is key, that is one thing that I truly miss in sailing. I do not get to drive much anymore. With the rules in the MUMM 30 class or the Farr 40 it keeps me from driving and has taken some of the fun out of sailing that I used to have.

So we will take possesion of 1464 next weekend after a trip to Annapolis to meet with Scott, pick up the boat and bring her back to Cleveland. I cannot wait for the Annapolis NOOD regatta which will be our debut in the class. Just hoping that the begining of April is warm in Cleveland so that we can sail some before we go!

Anyway that is all for today. Have a good one!
Peacefrog!

A Long Week!

2007-01-26T14:17:00.000-05:00

With not much to say. Sorry about that. I am the only one at the loft now that Sue has retired and I have been pasted with paper work and trying to get some sail repairs done! Yikes do I miss Sue!
Cheers

Tac

Key West, Done and Done!

2007-01-19T10:41:00.000-05:00

So today is the last day of Key West Race Week, but a few boats are able to be on the trailer or on the delivery home. It will be interesting to see whether Alinghi decide to sail today or jet back to Dubia to sail thier AC boats. WOW what a choice eh?

So I was having a drink or two with Roger the other night and we got to talking about the Farr 40 class in KW. I starting thinking about how you have two of the AC owners sailing in that event as drivers and how the "ultimate" owner driver is not and has not ventured into that class.

Larry Ellison has always thought of himself as a great sailor and driver, shit there was talk that he was going to drive Oracle/BMW last time around.

So my question of the day is......Why does Larry not get himself a Farr 40 and go head to head with Ernesto and Vincenzo? Both of whom are Farr 40 World Champs. It would certainly be a heck of lot cheaper for him in the long run?

Hey Larry, maybe after you lose the Cup again this time you can finally see the light and try to beat Ernesto in the 40?

Key West Race Week, Arm Chairing it!

2007-01-17T16:25:00.000-05:00

Key West Race Week thoughts from a far!

So the fleet has just finished up Day 3 of Acura Key West Race Week and there have been lots of surprises and a few “duh of course they are kicking ass” teams on the leader board.

I have yet to actually talk to my brother, but since he had a good day today, maybe I will call and congratulate him for getting his head out of his ass! (Sorry had to be said). I am sure that the Seal Bashers are having a much better day and are finally getting the results that they should have been getting from the get go!

Anyway some highlights and comments from the hack that is not there.

1) Farr 40 class. Any doubt that Ernesto cannot drive a boat should be quickly dismissed! Go the Flash! Showing that a solid finish at the Worlds is not fluke! First WOW of the regatta……..Warpath! Holy shit is they getting pasted. I would guess a few changes are needed in their bid to win the Worlds.

2) Good showing in the Melges 32 fleet. Sorry to see Nitemare dropped a little in the standings. I was seriously hoping for a great result out of Tom and crew. Keep kicking ass Tom!

3) I guess if you want to win IRC 1 you might want to get off your ass and buy Rima, it is for sale and you can have a three way with Hissar and Numbers! They are certainly showing the fleet the way to do it. Ouch on Russell and the Swedes.

4) Tight results up front in the IRC 2 fleet. Come one Markey get our boys jumping and keep the Leprechaun’s behind you!

5) No idea on the Div 3 boats today as the Premier site sucks ass.

6) Don’t really care about the PHRF fleets down there other then it is nice to see a 10 year old SR 33 still kicking ass. That has to make Glenn quite happy.

Anyway, like I say it is easy to sit up here and arm chair quarterback the results a few thousand miles away!

Sitting, waiting, wishing........

2007-01-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

So today is the day that many sailors are driving, flying or sailing your way down to Key West for the 20th Edition of Key West Race Week, oops, I am supposed to call it Acura Key West Race Week.

No worries there as I know that without great sponsors like Acura regattas like Key West would never happen. Anyway, so here I sit in the old sail loft in Holland Michigan trying to find all the info that I can on the events that are about to take place or that have taken place, such as the Lauderdale to Key West Race that went off yesterday.

I am looking forward to seeing the pictures of both new Sjambok and the Yeoman. I also talked to my good buddy Mark Pinney who is now working with the TP 52 Windquest late yesterday and they are ready after their trying exercise in International shipping. Windquest is the ex Warparth the Botin Carkeek TP 52 that was runner up in the Med Cup last summer. Well as they shipped the boat over to the US for some winter sailing the boys at the shipping terminal broke the rig as they off loaded the kit from the ship! Can you believe that? Well it happens more then you can imagine.

I hear that the Samba Pa Ti had the same issue when their new BC TP 52 was shipped from NZ.

Anyway, I am also keen to see the results from the MUMM 30 Class at this event. There are only 10 boats in this class, manly due to, in my opinion the fact that we just sailed our World Championships in late November. I think it is just too much to ask owners and crews to do two major events just a little over a month and a half. But of the 10 that are there we should see a great event with some high talent in the top of the fleet yet again. Routing for Black Seal as the brother, (Brad), is back trimming main and calling tactics.

We also see the North American debut of the masthead kites on the Farr 40's. I am very interested to see the results of that change. I am a bit concerned that the boat will just dig in and carve a big ole' hole in the water much like older IMS boats. But the class is trying new things and the numbers are still there. Go Barking Mad! (I have two friends sailing with Jim, Curtis and Mike Hill)

Oh, well time to get back to the loft floor and try to forget that all my buddies are South sailing and I am North freezing my ass off. Oh well it is not to long before St. Croix where I am supposed to trim jib and kite on the RP 44 Storm.

So I say good by for now, I hope my first blog attempt is worth the read.
Cheers,

Tac

PS, now is a great time to buy a new sail from True Wind Racing! email tac at truewindracing dot com and I will be happy to help you out.