Today during race day I broke my second Taipan mainsail Halyard shackle. Exactly in the same way as the last one.
As described earlier I also "totally reformed" an Aussie selection hound shackle. The first Aussie telling me that Australia sees some major winds and we Europeans potter around on light wind lakes can expect a laud laughter from yours truly.

I'm pulling bigger loads on my F16 in the backwater that is called the North sea and you guys. Mind you the timber-epoxy boat is holding up fine. Knock on wood !

Had a race day today. Waves/chop to destroy your boat if not your pride, and winds of a force 5 (around 20 knots). Typical "pull everthing tight, keep her upright and survive" weather that seems especially typical for this years cat races in the Netherlands. What I wouldn't do for some plain force 3 to 4 racing with some mild seastate.

Boat is fully whole otherwise. Sadly without this top shackle you can't pull really pull on loads of downhaul which you do NEED to pull in these "fun" conditions. So after starting, racing, capsizing and getting up and still sail across finish in the first race, we had to retire. Taking 2 DNF in the proces.

Just picked up a Taipan 5.7 mainsail shackle, surely this one will hold. Although the forecast for tomorrow is westerly winds 22 to 27 knots (force 6) so maybe I should be more careful in making grant statements now, as I'm running out of wood to knock.

Did a good first race till we dropped it. Pointing angles and speed same as I-20's; what we lost was on tactics and because we dipped her 200 mtr before the finish, right in the gate.

Lets see what tomorrow brings

Wouter

I will have to thank my crew for an excellent call yesterday. After we flipped at the downwind gate and righted the boat I assumed that we had been passed by all the boats in the fleet and so that it was better to sail towards the shore and rehoist my mainsail and get back in time for the second start. She convinced me to make a detour throught the finish and at least score a result in stead of a DNF.

Turns out that on handicap we still scored a 2nd place ! That is after taken our sweet time righting the boat. Okay, okay, due to the harsh conditions only 4 boats did start in our open class but still. I could have sworn that were DFl after our swim.

The event, westland Cup, really suffered from big wind and rough seastate this year. Last year, when we were there with the F16 Dutch coast challenge event, the open class contained 25 boats and all raced. This year only 4 boats started in the open class with at least 1 result (no DNS or DNF)

I think we are in for a nice race weekend and not have yet another blown-out and "keep yourself and your boat whole" event.

But I did enjoy myself inmensely as by coincident I was hooked with an excellent crew. She is still new at the game of catsailing and racing, but boy, what a progress she must have made in the last 5 months since she started cat sailing. I'm going to place an order at the production line that turns out crew/sailors like her. Sadly that we could get only 1 race in yesterday.

Once again it is proved to me that one must really find and hook up with a very good crew, in order to do really well when sailing these high performance spi boats. The skipper needs to know the boat in every and all aspects and understands every twitch she makes, but in the are of tactic, tuning/trimming and speed under spi the crew is all important and the skipper is just sort of an assigned taxi driver that creates an environment in which the crew can excell so that a good result can be made.

Next F16 class race in 3 weeks.

Wouter

Is she hot as well?

Now what are we talking about?

W,
May I point out Australia is larger than Europe. So one would expect areas of predominately light conditions and others of heavy air. 99% of the T4.9 fleet are east coast where it is more likely to see lighter onditions than heavy.

What size shackle was it?

When it comes to women, a gentleman has to be careful with his public comments, as we all know.

But mate, that girl ain't got no worries !


Wouter

Hijacking this thread, to get back to sailing/F-16's


Wouter wrote about sheeting and mainsail trim earlier, and how he did not sheet the main as hard as some F-18 crews. I came over an article visualizing what happens when oversheeting.

Ref: http://syr.stanford.edu/SAILFLOW.HTM

Look for the headline: "What Does This Tell Us About Sailing?"

They did not include a jib in their illustration, but its quite easy to see what happens anyway. If their figures are correct, having a long leach-telltale/ribbon will not be precise enough to warn you before you have badly overtrimmed the main?
I think I am going to put some more telltales on my main at 2/3s height, and observe for myself what happens.

We often struggle to get the front windward telltales on the main to fly properly. I read somwhere that 20% of the sails power comes from the windward side. Does anybody have any real-life experiences to share on this? Trim for the leeward side, or flatten the sail/rotation and get both sides flying (we feel that this gives less power and height when beating)


The rest of the article, about CFD and sails are worth reading as well.

Some last minute mistake necessitate us to pull the boat over right before we got out. I can't remember what went wrong. I forgot to put in the top batten or something. However, it was enough to catch the attention of the photographer, who then proceeded to make an excellent series of shots.




Here we have just left the beach, and Christa is quick with the daggerboard as setting that even a little bit is a major help.




Daggerboard set and we're powering up. Crew jumps forward to control the jib.





Here we encounter one of smaller obstacles between the beach and the sea. Did a little bit of hull flying (both !) on this little ramp. Crew is already sitting we she needs to be and is ready for everything. Boy, what a crew, made getting through the surf a piece of cake. I've just pushed down the luff daggerboard completely, right after jamming my luff rudder down. It is not locked just jammed in its stock. This works like a charm.





And here everything is dandy. Daggerboard down, rudder down, powered up sails, good speed and we're reaching for the open water thus clearing the surf. All took less than 10 seconds. WOW !




And a special thanks to me crew for the day : Christa !

Wouter

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Here some pics of the Blade, while encountering a breaking wave.











Wouter

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Indeed. Have trouble concentrating on sailing

I'll get me coat.........

Here a similar picture of me going through the surf at REM-race 2004. Notice the difference in how the crew sits on the boat with how Christa sat !

Seems like he is doing his best to puncture a hole in my decks !

mind you, we were kinda in a hurry to get back out on the course again after having sailed back to the beach for some repairs. We did that 3 times that day during the distance race as we were foolish enough to run some lines the wrong way and we couldn't correct that on the water.

Here is a picture of me running to the boat shed to find some replacement gear. I can't even remember what it was. Some shackle or something.



It was a fun race weekend but we definately had our share of bad luck. When we left the beach the whole fleet was over the horizon and in the far distance we could only see a single hobie dragoon (=SLOW !!!). Caught up with about 1/3 of the fleet after that though and took some 2hour 30 minutes to complete the course with first finisher needing about 2 hours and 10 minutes, I believe.

Wouter