here are the first pictures of the westland cup regatta.

Sorry about the fact that the reports and picture drip in over time in such a delayed fashion. But there is more to come as Kirt Simmons promised me a photo-cd with pictures he took.

We has another bad luck as Phill Branders photo series came out blank.

Anyways here are the first two as ripped of the net (the westland Cup site)

They both show my boat from some distance. first at the beach later on the water in singlehanded setup.



Yellow boat little to the right of the middle with dark grey sails and a number 1 in the sail. That number was the easiest to make using only some sail tape so that is why we decided on it. For some reason nobody else had this number as well and it got accepted at the regatta.

Kirt is getting out of my sailing gear to the right of the boat and Phill is holding the boom. Another Taipan mainsail can just be seen a little to the right of the yellow Hobie sail. The others are out of the picture



Yellow hulls and grey sail (no jib) that is the Typhoon F16 on the water among part of the F20's and F18's sailing towards to startline to start racing.

Wouter

Good luck

Now you know how it should look like.

Note how the starboard single block is fitted just to the right of the middle of the plate inside the mast. The port block is further to the side. This is done to prevent the larger block and line (blue) of the first stage from rubbing against the mast.

In my system I used Top to bottom :

1 AHPC Z-shaped plate (bar in the mast) + 4 monel 4.9 mm rivets

2 ronstan RF614 shackles with a narrowed pin opening (to fit the blocks to the Z-plate)

2 Ronstan RF20101 blocks (Not the High Load types as these have no ball barings)

(red) Some 2500 mm 2-3 mm line. the most flexible line you can find with minimum 300 kg break strength and virtually no stretch

1 RF20111 block with becket(end of 2nd stage; where the three red line point to)

1 Sailsafe sheave 30 mm block (1st stage ; I still has a good 30 mm block laying around; decide yourself what you are going to use)

(Green) 2500 3 mm line; the most flexible line you can find with at least 500 kg break strength and virtually no stretch

(Blue) some nice looking medium gray 6 mm swiftcord total length I think about 9 meters but run your numbers on this yourself as well.


At the bottom of the mast are of course the three Ronstan RF20711 (NO high load as they don't have ball barings) exit blocks and two Ronstan RF 5000 can cleats with RF5005 guides

In the corner of my mainsail I currently use a ronstan RF185 lightweight wireblock. This one has no ball barings but at 300-600 kg load I don't think any small block will use its ball barings without crushing them. Ronstan blocks will transition from ball baring to sliding acetal baring at 250 kg loads. So I went cheap and just use the high load heavy duty small block I still had laying around and that I could fit in the whole in my mainsail that was specially made for it.


Wouter

Wouter (and all)-
Made it back- Your CD is on the way (with a whole bunch of Taipan/F16HP stuff on it also).
Had a great trip but still trying to get caught up at work and with the piled up "Honey Do's"-
It was great meeting Phill and Tony in person- got some great pictures of them lounging in a sofa on the beach- and also Daniel and Annaliese and John, and of course seeing Wouter, Geert and Gregg again. Truly an "intercontinental" get together of F16HP'ers!
Wouter's boat looks very nice as does the new Stealth but I sailed on the tried and true 4.9 with Geert. We did pretty good considering we had two skippers on the boat! I haven't crewed in a long time and if you want to appreciate your crews, just try it for one regatta! My hands were peeling for week afterwards after flying the spi on every downwind leg! Definitely not the conditions this lake sailor is used to (big swells and big current) and it seemed to be giving Geert (as well as many of the other sailors) some trouble too! We were of course heavyweights in our division so that didn't help. Daniel would be double trapped when we were hiking out trying to keep the hull up! We did quite well I felt, often finishing right in the middle of, or ahead of the Hobie FX ones, F 18's (in our start) and even some of the Inter 20's, placing in the top half of the fleet consistently on Texel handicap (despite our less than stellar sailing - see Daniel's results!). Great regatta (98 boats!!) and very friendly people with nice venue (nude beach RIGHT next to us - kept my sons entertained!) as well as getting to sail some F 16HP's. We seemed to be fairly matched with the Stealth in the conditions, Wouter's one up boat seemed to be having some difficulty staying with us consistently- best to let Tony/Phill tell that story. Boat under spi is just awesome if you can control it - I feel a flatter spi (possibly even smaller??) would have been faster in those conditions. Snuffing/launching was pretty good overall although I did blow a few - generally when trying to douse at high speed last minute coming in to the mark in the swells. I think the strategy here is to go deep (ie "overstand" the gate) and keep the speed up and the spi up and going like mad then drop and beam reach with jib through the gate and upwind. It was too easy to end up going too deep toward the end, and slow if you tried to get right on the jibe angle (for us - didn't seem to be Daniel's issue ) The current may have had a lot to do with this as it caused us to understand the weather mark multiple times (including at least once when we had to reach downwind under the entire fleet before we could cross on port!).
Anyway, gotta get home now!

Kirt Simmons
Taipan 4.9 USA 159
Flyer USA 185

Kirt,

>>Made it back- Your CD is on the way (with a whole bunch of Taipan/F16HP stuff on it also).

Thanks, looking forward to it.

>>My hands were peeling for week afterwards after flying the spi on every downwind leg!

Geert is still using the single ratchet system isn't he ? I should have taken you along on my boat with the 2 autoratchets per side. That make a huge difference. Without excergeration, a person can hold the kite then with just two fingers. Seriously. You actually have to move your hand forward intentionally to sheet the spi out. Pulling in is the same but holding it is alot easier. I think this setup to be excellent for singlehanded spi sailing.


>>Definitely not the conditions this lake sailor is used to (big swells and big current) and it seemed to be giving Geert (as well as many of the other sailors) some trouble too!

I warned you all about the current ! It stuffs up your race if you don't compensate for it, doesn't it ?


>>and very friendly people with nice venue (nude beach RIGHT next to us - kept my sons entertained!)

Not to mention the other STUFF ! Like the blue moon (No that is not the same as the blue oyster)


>>Wouter's one up boat seemed to be having some difficulty staying with us consistently- best to let Tony/Phill tell that story.

My boat definately needs to be optimized; I also took out some prebend after the DCC and that helped as well. My boat had trouble pointing upwind and still does. But I think we know where the problem is to be found. Phill actually found a very good upwind trim during the racing but then tried to make it even better and stuffed up the trim completely. That is what he told me. But there is no mistake my boat needs at least a season of tuning and optimizing.


>>Boat under spi is just awesome if you can control it - I feel a flatter spi (possibly even smaller??) would have been faster in those conditions.

Yeas but then again in the light conditions of friday I was happy with a little bit of curve in the spi. It is always a compromise.


>>>Snuffing/launching was pretty good overall although I did blow a few - generally when trying to douse at high speed last minute coming in to the mark in the swells. I think the strategy here is to go deep (ie "overstand" the gate) and keep the speed up and the spi up and going like mad then drop and beam reach with jib through the gate and upwind.


Yes, Geert really wants to stay high at the leeward mark doesn't he. I've been his crew a couple of times and had the same issues. Also the trick is to first pull the retrieval line (really) tight and only then uncleat the halyard. This makes snuffing go alot more smoothly and with less force. Right at uncleating the skipper just dipps the bow down to straight downwind and with a continious and smooth curve heads up. When timed right the spi will go in very quickly and with ease. You can then do this really close to the mark; but then the crew needs to work together like a real team.

See ya next time Kirt,

Wouter

Pictures of this friday trip !

Just got the photo CD of Kirt. His sons were kind enough to take some pics of us while preparing to leave and when landing a shy 6 hours later.

The expression on Kirts face and his "standing there beside the boat" speaks volumes. He enjoyed himself as the others did but it was also a trip to remember, the gods gave us a bit of everything so we were all glad to be there and get something to eat.

Wouter

Pic one Preparing to leave:

Phill Brander (beard) and Tony Jenkins are rigging the selftacking Jib.

The Jib track came from AHPC and I'm quite happy with it.

Wouter

Okay, okay, don't blast me on the with anti-slip and my boat. I know white and yellow is not a good mix. But I couldn't find black or grey anti-slip tape. That is until we had put it on the day before. I walk into a story just to get a ratchetblock replacement that we busted earlier in the week. And what do you KNOW ! right there on the counter black anti-slip tape ! So teh white will be replaced by black.

Wouter

Actually quite a nice shot taken from the Zandvoort clubhouse. We have a 2 story, removable clubhouse.

You can see the boat that were sailed by Wouter/Tony ; Geert/Kirt : Daniel/Anna-liese

Greg Goodall is talking to Daniel and Anna-liese who are all ready to go and waiting for the rest of us slackers !

Tony and Kirt are suiting themselfs and Phill can be (just) seen to talking to Kirt (White and blue drysuit). Phill is not getting dressed because of his soar back. A real pitty as he is definately the one to immensely enjoy such a tour stage; trekking some serious distance to the south. He would ride with Frank (by car) to the westland cup site as Frank wasn't sailing that stage as well. Lucky for us because Frank did a tremendous job of transporting our camping gear and Kirts sons south.

Thank you Frank !

It was only 44 km but it felt like much more. Of course working you way against the current and with only some 4 knots winds during the better part of the trip will give you that feeling.

But here we arrive ! at exactly 20:00 or 8 pm

I was quick to get to the beach after being tailed for a significant time.

However I was not the first to land

Taipan 4.9 Aus 299 (Daniel van Kerckhof and Anna-Liese Byrne) had the first touch down and are here pointing the boat back up into the wind.

The are seriously fast no matter what but in 4 knots of wind at 110 kg overall they are more then that.

Phill Brander is walking over to help them (I guess as I was still out on the water)

Wouter

And now a very nice concluding series of Kirt Simmons and Geert Ruesink on Taipan F16 NED 189

Notice how Kirt smiles of happiness in the second picture and then ... The third picture.


Also take a look at the inside of the starboard hull in the second picture. Now, we do you think the water start and the hull ends ?

Talking about a mirror polish job, ehhh !

And the manly display of geert. Chin to the side and he runs the boat into the beach like a proper marine. At least that is how it looks like as I know it went down very slowly.

I must say however that Geert won great appreciation of us all by sailing singlehanded as he did. And I mean trully singlehanded. He even sailed double singlehanded in the last race (the final) at the westland cup. Without the spinnaker, that is true but still ! Waves, current and some significant wind. 1 tiller, 1 traveller and 1 sheet. Geert showed us the mindset of a "Can do personality" as he has done in the 2002 USA Taipan and F16 nationals.

Actually Daniel said to Geert that he didn't have much to comment on during the Clinic. Geert is a natural, with a bit more (Alot more ?) practice he was projected to be a great sailor.

That is some praise when coming from a guy like Daniel.

So maybe that picture of damsel in distress Kirt (holding on to two lines and giggling his way in to the beach) and stern chinned Hero Geert making a dashing display is not so far of the truth ?

Therefor I can't help thinking when looking at the 3rd picture "2 more days and 7 races to go Kirt; Yep the gauntlet has been layed down."

Just joking with you here guys.

A nice picture series just the same. And excellent show at the racing as well.

Wouter

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In "Part 2" note Geert's boat behind Wouter's with Daniel's behind Geert's. Geert is at the stern and I'm walking toward him. Also note the new AHPC snuffer hoop and bag on Wouter's pole- looked nice and seemed to work well but you'ld have to ask Tony and Phill how it worked.

Kirt Simmons