No Pain, No Gain

I have taken my time putting up this piece; there has been much to mull over. The weekend of the 13th of March was in many ways exemplary of our operation:

It had been two weeks since the last sail. This is how we generally plan to operate at the moment: go sailing, see what modifications work and where the boat needs improvement, come back with a list of mods, repairs and things to manufacture, and turn the lot around to be back on the water in a fortnight.

On Friday after work (we knock off at 12 - one of the perks at AIRBUS) we picked up the hulls from the Composite Structures Development Centre. The hardest task since the previous sail had been the installation of our new daggerboards. We came up with a shape, Steve Clark was generous in telling us what stack-up he used (we know how to design in composites, but sometimes it's good to check on certain boat bits), HYDE enthusiastically collaborated and came up with moulds and carried out the manufacturing, finishing and NDT-ing, and we looked after the installation. We had carefully shaped and aligned the nylon cassettes and bonded these in. On the previous evening we debated how to take up the surface shape of the hull with the slightly recessed cassettes. In the end we decided to heap mould release wax on the daggerboards, slide these into place and fill the indent with a toothpaste-like bog of glass misrospheres and woodfill.

That was the easy bit. Standing looking at the daggerboards which appeared robustly glued to the hull cassettes, we wondered whether we had inadvertently produced a pair of fixed foil hulls. Fortunately after a bit of percussionary persuasion they popped free.

We trailered down to Weymouth on the Friday and assembled the platform at the sailing academy before the sun set. One of our mods (and these trickle steadily through) was an improvement to our dolley wheels. The most troublesome part is always attaching the trampoline, but we have plans to trim this down and modify it a bit for lighter weight and improved functionality.

Much of the Saturday morning was taken up with finishing off a few modifications - adjusting the camber control inside the wing, final fettling of the dagger board cassettes, and fitting new bolts for our flap slot gap finger adjusters. One of the previous week's mods had been the extension of the deformable trailing edge on the upper element 1, and we were keen to see how this paid off.

This was also to be a weekend of showboating for us - Jeremy Evans from Yachts & Yachting was to be there, as well as Tim Daddo of C-Class and Macquarie Innovation speed sailing fame.

Rigging and launching were slick enough in 8 knots - we have gone through our teething troubles and are now comfortable in most winds.

Following the boat on the water, Gordon trapezing to leeward and Paul next to the leeward hull, Jeremy & Co. contentedly snapping away, it was immediately clear that the combination of tighter slot gap, upper main section extended trailing edge and skinny supereliptic foils were showing a marked improvement.

We substituted Jeremy for Gordon and let him try the boat. We will be interested to hear what he has to say. Was that the May eidtion of Yachts & Yachting? Paul and Gordon did a number of flybys as in the attached video, before coming back in to pick up Tim Daddo.

Tim's experience of the Yellow Pages boats with their more complex mechanisms and condition-specific rigs would be valuable to us. We were looking for tips, deficiencies to iron out, suggestions for ways of doing things, and a general assessment of where we were from a fresh pair of eyes. We weren't disappointed. He also pointed out the excessive bending of the lower flap relative to the main element's deformable trailing edge, and we have an idea now of how much we want to stiffen that up by. This is just as well, really, because not long afterwards the bottom control horn collapsed at the site of a minor repair, leaving the main sheet load to torque up the whole lower flap. The latter promptly snapped neatly in half, forcing us to retire for the weekend.

All in all, we have learned that the new daggerboards work well, and that the mods carried out are taking us tangibly in the right direction. The speed is getting there - just over 20 knots in a 12 knot breeze. Upwind we are quick and composed, but downwind we need time on the water and a lot of tuning of the slot gap. We knew we needed a new lower flap anyway - just as well that we were using the old one when the control horn gave in.

So it's back to the workshop for the team. More carbon cutting and mould waxing... and all the while, time ticking. We plan to be back in a month.

Andrew