keltik

Also I think the white island race is coming back this year. I don't enjoy the longer races but I should do it. It's another type of sailing that's important to learn.

Race report - Open Series; Had 20kts on the way to the start line, decided to run 1st reef in the main and #2.5 jib. Then it started gusting up to 25kts so we went to the 2nd reef. On the first leg of the course, the wind dropped a bit so back to 1st reef. Second leg of the course we got stuck in a wind hole trying to avoid the current around Matakana. While the wind was low, we got the full mainsail out and changed to the biggest headsail. Then a puff took us out of the wind hole and we started screaming up the harbor. The wind picked up to 20kts again and this is where the biggest mistake was made. I called for the #4 jib which is useful for 30-35kts. Partly because it looked like there was more wind to come (and didn't want to repeat the disaster from that last windy 2 handed race) and partly because it would be a lot quicker to set up than the #3 or even the #2.5. The wind had a few 25kt gusts but never got worse than that. So to use a metaphor - I'd shifted down to 2nd gear expecting a big hill and ended up running out of revs on the flat. We lived with it until the next mark when we did another sail change back to the #2.5. By this point, Howzat, Rascal Tom and Bondi Tram had pulled well ahead. We were left battling with Synergy and La Vida to the finish. Lessons learned: On a day with a shifty unpredictable wind. Stick with the #2.5 or #3 jib up front. Realistically they can handle 15-25kts without drastically affecting performance. It's way quicker to reef the main to keep things under control rather than trying sail changes. That wind hold behind Matakana has caught me twice now. Don't do it again. Still, even at 6th-ish place - it was better than being at work or watching telly.

Race report - 2 handed: Light wind forecast, put up the big headsail and compensated for lack of boat speed with good tactics. Making sure we were in the tidal flow when it was with us and staying as close to the shallow as possible when it was against us. By the half way mark, we had made it to the middle of the pack and then the wind died. Howzat took a different line to everyone else and crept along the Matakana Island shoreline. Very slowly making progress against the tide. With 1 knot of boat speed against 2 knots of tide, it's a losing battle where we were. So I dropped the anchor and watched everyone float backwards past us. As the wind filled, I lifted anchor and gave it maximum effort to the finish line. Howzat had snuck into first place but we managed a solid second place. Very happy with the outcome, to be the second fastest boat around the course (including A division) really shows how effective the anchoring strategy was. Probably would have finished behind La Vida without it. Next open series race is this Sunday, very excited to see what we can do.

Had a rum aboard Synergy after the race. The people make the sport

Race report; A bit short handed with only 3 crew. In 5th place coming into the final leg of the race - tacking through the Pilot Bay channel with boats moored everywhere. Synergy was 50m ahead, they launched their spinnaker and pulled another 100m ahead. Here's my best attempt at recreating the drama. (Yellow line is Extract Digit, finish line is the bottom right corner). Synergy went wide around the first yellow mark and got stuck in a wind shift near the base of the mount - which meant they couldn't run as tight an angle to the wind as us. By point number 3 we had pulled level with them. After number 4, we were alongside and fully intended to give them room to avoid a moored boat, but as the racing rules did not oblige us to make room for them - they dipped behind the moored boat and lost time against us. We finished 50m ahead of them. Lessons learned: The boat 'points' (sails close to the wind direction) really well in it's current setup. The time lost by running the smaller jib in the harbor is easily made up by the faster tacks and better pointing. The finishing order was almost exactly in order of boat weight from lighter to heavier. On a light wind day, you've gotta do something amazing to make 4ton of boat competitive with a 1ton sport boat.

Another brand I won't mention throws "engine oil deteriorated" codes if it calculates low oil viscosity. The calculation is based on engine oil pressure vs temperature vs rpm. So a slightly blocked oil pump strainer = lower oil pressure = fault code when the viscosity is actually ok and the oil pressure is high enough that it won't trigger other oil pressure related fault codes.

Open series race report. The crew did a great job, we were a little conservative with tactics but still managed to squeak out a win. A great photo finish 2 seconds ahead. The final 2 legs of the race against Rascal Tom were excellent fun. Forget the win, it was a mint day on the water! Finish time is the important bit on that results chart. Corrected time only applies for a couple of the competitors. Had a little bit too much sail up by the end of the race but managed to hold onto it. I think I'm underestimating the difference a cooler air temperature and higher humidity makes. 20kts wind speed on a hot summers day is significantly different to 20kts in winter. Really, I need to reef the main a little earlier. Next job will be adjusting or replacing the lazyjacks to make this easier. What are lazyjacks? Find out in the next post

You're going to love a hardtop cabin you can shimmy into when it starts pissing down. Dog will also love it for nap time

First race of the 2 handed series. DNF Expecting 20kts wind gusting 25. We had sails set which would be fastest at 20 and planned to just live with the gusts. First reef in the main and the new 2.5 jib. 2 of the 4 battens fell out of the jib when we hoisted it. One landed on the deck, the other is MIA. Had a great race beating into the wind up the harbor. Passed the 4 boats in our division who had actually started the race. In the gusts, we got slammed but just held on and dealt with it. Had the cabin windows underwater and got the rudder out of the water once. Got to the top mark of the course and conditions were getting sporty. Wind speed had picked up to 25 gusting 35. We had to pass the red and green mark on our left side, but the wind speed kicked up to over 35kts - with full right rudder, the boat would not turn. We eased the main sheet all the way out, still no good, eased the jib sheet out and finally screamed past the wrong side of the mark. Better than going straight into the sandbank behind it. No problem, we'll just turn around and pass it on the way back. At the purple spot we tacked and the jib was flapping so violently it pulled the sheets out of the pulleys and was now uncontrollable. Without the jib and an outgoing tide, we got blown sideways and couldn't get to the mark. So to get things under control, we ran with the wind so the mainsail would shadow the jib allowing us to drop it and sort things out. The purple line shows the distance traveled in the time it took to get everything under control. We were screaming along at 11kts over ground with the tide. Since La Vida was the only boat left racing at this point - everyone else had withdrawn, and facing the prospect of having to tack all the way back up the harbor - we retired and sailed home. Well done to Frank on La Vida. Having the ability to furl or roll up the front and main sails to reduce their area meant he could reef them easily and weather the big gusts. Lessons learned: to finish first, first you must finish. It would have cost us a few mins to get another reef in the mainsail and maybe another 5 to change the jib to a smaller one. But we would have been able to complete the course. Every time we've thought "it's ok, we can live with these sails for a bit longer" it has cost us. Open series race starts in 4 hours, id better go have breakfast.

I guess surface area is more related to effective service life than anything else. Might have to replace it every second engine instead of every fifth.

Absolutely smoked it. 1st by a decent margin. Now to keep that up for the rest of the series

😉

So this means I have successfully remained in the drunk cruising division, very nice - great success. Synergy get to start at 12 because they missed the handicapping race. I think that means they can't score points for this one. Nice to be starting within a few minutes of the boats I know we are competitive with. It's going to be war. With only 3 crew we might not fly a Spinnaker, but if we do get 25kts of wind - that won't disadvantage us much.

4 months later, time for another lift and wash. Before; After; Seals for the drive leg still haven't arrived but the oil looks good so I think we'll go a bit longer before needing to change it. The header tank must be working. One problem to solve was a persistent vibration since the last time we took the propeller off. In general, 3 bladed folding props are dynamically balanced and are stamped with numbers to make sure they go back into the hub in the correct spot...but my 2 bladed prop doesn't have any markings and the manual for it doesn't state anything about installing them in a particular spot. Anyways, took both blades off and weighed them. 20 gram difference. It seems they must be balanced with the hub. So having the positions flipped would potentially introduce a 40gram discrepancy. Now we're back to butter smooth power delivery and the vibration is gone. Sunday is the first round of the winter open series. Looking like 25kts of windy rain and I've only got 3 crew. Sailmaker has recut the main and that's made a vast improvement. Can't wait to try it in anger. Handicap times haven't been released yet, will be interesting to see how much of a head start my good mates on La Vida and Synergy will have.

One benefit to racing alongside the sailmaker is he keeps a good eye on things. Literally just called me to say he wants to adjust the sail. What a GC Edit: or he reads this thread...

Gave it heaps on Sunday Mixed results tbh. Really competitive on some wind angles but really struggled on others. Some more rig tuning is required, couldn't get the main sail shape where I wanted it. I'll have one more go at messing with the mast before I ask the sailmaker to make some adjustments to the new sail instead. Need to get someone who enjoys graphs and mspaint diagrams into sailing. The list of shit to tweak is endless. Saturday is the first 2 handed race. Hopefully conditions are good so we can spend a bit more time figuring out what adjustments are needed.

And the winter series starts this Sunday, so if anyone would like to come join the crew and give racing a go, flick me a message.

How to achieve that is the hard part. Here's a handy diagram to help the below explanation. The top of the mast is supported by a diamond arrangement of stays, so we can't really bend that bit. The yellow stays do most of the work holding the mast up and currently have about 1,000kg of pre-load on them. This compresses the mast enough that it bends in the middle. Then the red stay limits the amount it's allowed to bend forward in the lower third. The green stay is the mystery. It's supposed to limit how far the middle can bend forwards, so you would think having it looser will allow more bend...BUT we need a minimum amount of tension or the mast will bend laterally when the top is under load. Also because the green stay is held away from the mast by the lower spreaders - more tension should push the spreaders and thus the mid section of the mast forwards. In practice, trial and error is going to solve this over the next few weeks. We can always crank up the tension on the blue backstay to get the required shape when sailing but ideally that backstay is for fine tuning rather than a long term setup.

More rig tuning required. So the new mainsail is cut requiring a bit more curve in the mast. Step one is to sail the boat and figure out how much bend we need. Something like that would be great.

Best of luck. I have no advice because I've only ever been 100% happy with an exhaust note once.... And it wasn't on my car - but I spent a long time trying to recreate it

"If you can read this - change gear earlier next time"

And in very exciting news, we have a new main sail for the winter series It's been cool to see it go from a design on paper to a finished sail. Took it out for a test drive yesterday and it looks great. We might need to tweak the amount of bend in the mast a little bit to suit it. Gotta love new stuff. This combined with our new jib designed specifically for harbor racing should make the winter series very enjoyable

Had the last of the summer blue water races a couple weeks ago and had a really good time. Spent 5 hours chasing down this guy; We had the big spinnaker up in plenty of wind and were cruising along at a consistent 8.5-9kts with bursts up to 10. He sent me this neat photo of the chase; And then this photo of us finally passing him; Finished 3rd after 7 hours elapsed. Learned that the bigger headsail is only good up to 12kts of wind. Anything above that and we're faster with the smaller one. I kinda knew this before - but in this race we kept it up in 16-18kts to save the time lost trying to do a sail change and it sucked. Hopefully won't make that mistake again.

2500rpm now gives 7kts instead up from 6kts with a dirty bottom. Quite the big improvement! That drops down to 6.8 with a light layer of slime so we'll have a lift out and wash down before the winter racing series kicks off in May

Could you dykem/blue up the shaft of a lifter and see how much it compresses after a hearty nang? Not exactly easy tho but probably cheaper than a high speed keyhole camera