keltiks' 1980s Ross 35

[keltik]

Race Report - Open Series

Sunday saw the next round of the open series. Not much wind so needed to get the big cloth out.

It was the first time I had someone on the foredeck for me, the hoist was OK but we lost a fair bit of time on the drop. All of the team needs a lot more practice running symmetric spinnakers - it's probably the hardest thing to do right. 

I'm gonna try draw some diagrams to show the challenges and to help me figure out how the ropes need to be arranged for this to go smoothly. 

The old style fabric this spinnaker is made from soaked up the rain like a sponge and it weighed a tonne trying to gather it up when dropping it.  

Anyways, the day was uneventful until the final leg to the finish. We were one boat length behind Synergy (who had the club captain and commodore on board, 2 sailors I respect). They tried to deploy another sail to give them enough speed to stay ahead of us and it all got tangled up. We cruised past. They got the sail flying right and the final run to the finish required some mildly clever manoeuvering to keep them behind. 

The racing rules say as the windward boat - we need to keep clear of them, can't shut the door F1 style. They can't point as close to the wind as us with their bigger sail up. So they can't go over the top of us. They could go below us but would get stuck in our wind shadow. 

A very satisfying end to the day

[Nominal]

7 minutes ago, keltik said:

Race Report - Open Series

 

A very satisfying end to the day

How does the placing work, why is Diversion at 5 points when that time is so much slower?

[keltik]

8 minutes ago, Nominal said:

How does the placing work, why is Diversion at 5 points when that time is so much slower?

In this particular style of racing (mark foy), finishing order is what the points are based on.  The boats are given different starting times to account for differences in performance. 

Diversion gets a pretty early start as the boat and crew are not generally that quick.

In the summer racing with Tauranga club, everyone starts at the same time and a correction factor is added to your elapsed time as a handicap. 

Mark foy starts result in the whole fleet being relatively close to each other on the run to the finish and every boat you pass on the water counts for position. 

In regular racing, it's a lot harder to build a mental picture of your position during the race.

[keltik]

One argument against Mark Foy racing is that there are only one or two other boats starting at the same time as you so you miss out on the tactical fight to get an advantageous position on the starting line. 

Also you might start the race at 12:00 with no wind and barely pass the start line. Your competitor starts at 12:30 as the wind picks up. Effectively negating your handicap.

[keltik]

Race report - Open series round 6

It was a strange day. We raced out to Karewa Island but the course didn't really allow for much spinnaker usage (suits me fine).  We climbed through the pack with really good boat speed and were headed for a podium finish - there was no catching Patiko. Then we all reached the harbor entrance....

We took the red line to keep riding the swell into the entrance, La Vida followed. Synergy and Rimfire took the grey line. Could be more consistent wind out on the grey line? There's definitely an eddy over there in the tidal flow leaving the harbor.

Rascal Tom and Bondi Tram took the orange line to keep out of the current and caned past all of us until the wind dropped to nothing and we all sat there squiggling about.

The boats on the grey line kept a little momentum and made it into the harbor ahead of the pack.

Not a pleasing finish tbh. The grey line is probably the most reliable way through that entrance on an outgoing tide. But there's a chance for glory on the orange line.

I think in future, the safer bet of the grey line should be standard procedure.

[keltik]

Race report 2 handed - round 4

According to my calculations, we're in the top 3 of the series with La Vida and Howzat.

We had a good course, chose the right sails and had to catch La Vida who started 8 minutes ahead.  Howzat, Bondi Tram and Rascal Tom started 6 minutes behind us.

On the last leg of the race, we closed the gap to La Vida and squeezed past, clear ahead of the pack behind us. A wild bulk carrier appeared. 

Do we make a hard left turn to pass behind? Do we turn right and hope the bulker passes us before the finish line? 

We both turned right and the bulker slowed down as 2 tugs came alongside. 

One very important racing rule is if you get honked by a cargo ship - you are open to disqualification. Whatever we do must be clearly understood by the tug crew.

So we chopped a tight left turn as soon as it became apparent the ship wouldn't get past us before the finish line. Got thrown around by the prop wash from the tug and the ship.

La Vida followed but we managed to stay clear ahead of them to the line.

I think that's a second place finish. Never had a sniff of catching the boat in first place. Tempted to get the bottom washed for an extra burst of speed in the last few races.

No lessons learned or things we would've done different this week. Everything came up Milhouse. 

[Positive Ape]

great pics!

[keltik]

Race report - Open series round 7

Shipping strikes again! As we were lining up for the start, a container ship was leaving port. We had run away from the start line a timed distance to make a run back for the start. The container ship passed us as we turned for the line and blocked the wind.  So we started 2 minutes late. 

Partly bad luck, mostly my fault for continuing to put the boat in stupid positions before the start. 

So we set off close hauled up the harbor and slowly made up some ground. 

On the return leg, we closed up on the fleet as we approached the West Otumoetai cardinal mark. Some carnage was going on in front. One race yacht was limping away with shredded sails, another had dropped sails to assist - and the new boat immediately in front of us ran aground (shown in purple).

This new boat has a 2.9 meter draft so needs more water than us. Now I've rounded this mark many many times and know there's enough water for us even at low tide to sail around it with no worries. So we shot the gap between the aground boat and the mark. 

I saw a meter under the keel on the depth gauge and was chatting to the crew about how weird the whole situation was...WHUMP the boat almost stops. Before anyone's had time to process the situation, we're building speed again and continued on course with over a meter under the keel. 

At the bottom of the course, the whole fleet had compressed and we started tacking into the wind. The extra speed through the tacks and better performance with our harbor racing jib got us past Bondi Tram, then Rimfire, then Synergy, then a Spinnaker launch and we had La Vida in sight. The crew did a great job to keep the boat speed up.

I haven't seen any pics of the finish but it was a banger. La Vida was chasing Howzat and having some Spinnaker trouble. We were running a gennaker which meant we could turn the boat more across the wind and power it right up. 

1km to the line, La Vida is still having trouble 200m ahead. We're fully powered up at 8.2kts and hit the finish line 2 seconds behind them!

Howzat and Nauti Monster had a time penalty added so we ended up in 2nd place. At the after race prize giving, someone mentioned that west Otumoetai mark has been moved which explains the drama there.

Had some mechanical issues on Thursday but that's going to be a separate post

[keltik]

Mechanical issues.

I think it was the mayor Island race earlier in the year. One of the crew turned up late so we had the throttle pinned wide open to get to the start line on time. Only managed 20mins flat out before the overheat alarm sounded. 

So after ignoring the issue and avoiding full power for 6 months, I finally decided to pop the heat exchanger apart for a cleaning. 

First you remove the back water feed plate. Of course the very first bolt snaps. Back when the raw water pump was leaking, it dripped salt water onto this area for quite a while so everything is a bit sad looking.

The end cap absolutely chocka with salt in the bottom half and the heat exchanger tubes looking pretty scabby.

[keltik]

At this point, the service manual says just slide the tube nest out.  Well I reefed on that thing for hours and only got it to move a couple mm.  Seeing a losing battle, bolted it back together with 2 out of 3 bolts and the flanges no longer quite meeting up. 

It held water so did the job for the next race. We just used minimal amounts of engine and low power as a precaution.

Next weekend, time to remove the whole heat exchanger from the engine to work on it at home. Pretty easy to remove once the alternator was out of the way. 

[keltik]

Finally at home I could remove the front water cover plate. This revealed a bit more crud and explained why the core wouldn't budge. The manual doesn't really explain that the other end of the tube nest is sandwiched between 2 Orings which create a very tight fit once the end plate is bolted down and compresses the Orings.

There's no way to remove this cap with the heat exchanger fitted as there's no clearance between it and the alternator mounting bracket.  With that plate removed and a little bit more prying, the tube nest is removed.

[keltik]

Cleaning up corrosion. Cleaning salt deposits and scale. Drilling out the snapped bolt and finding the holes have a stainless thread insert from factory.

Putting a new thread insert in there, filing off some of the damage done by prying against the alloy housing and reassemble with new paint and seals. 

[keltik]

Now the part that made me contemplate suicide... Trying to put the heat exchanger back on the engine. 

So there's 3 exhaust ports with springy single layer stamped steel gaskets.  These gaskets are like those poppet toy things where they invert themselves and shoot across the engine bay never to be seen again. 

So you put the bolts through the heat exchanger and hang the gaskets off them. They are a loose fit on the bolts so slide off easily. There's not enough clearance around the thermostat housing to offer the manifold straight up to the head. 

As you come in at an angle, the bolts for cylinder 1 touch first and the gasket fires itself off into space. There's no clearance to get fingers in there to hold the gasket on, hell you can't even see it. 

So you try to hold pressure on all 6 bolts as you slide the heat exchanger into place. Then you hear the soul destroying noise of a gasket falling off and have to start again. 

Jamming my phone in a gap on selfie mode was useful to try and see if the gaskets were in the right spot once the bolts were all threaded. 

90% confident they were all in place I torqued that shit down, put the swollen half fucked radiator hoses back on and filled it with green stuff. 

Started the engine and the throttle cable snapped. So today's job is source a new cable. I'm glad it snapped now and not when I needed a burst of throttle to stop the boat when coming back into the dock. 

More info on the failure when I bolt the new part on ahead of Saturday mornings race. 

If the new cable doesn't arrive, I'll just have the old man down in the engine bay with his hand on the injector pump and can shout down commands like  "full speed ahead Mr Scott". And he can shout back "I've giv'n her all she's got captain. I cannae give her no more! Aye, the haggis is in the fire now for sure".

All above work was performed while planking through an opening just big enough for my shoulders with my arms over my head. Almost as bad as a BMW mini

[keltik]

Race report - final 2 handed

Well it pissed down. 

And it was fucking cold. 

And there wasn't much wind. In these conditions, weight is the deciding factor. So here's Howzat passing us.

And us sneaking up on La Vida.

Bondi Tram passed us, then ran aground, then passed us again. 

On the final leg to the finish, Nauti Monster at probably 1500kg took 1st. Howzat at I'm guessing 1800kg took 2nd. Then the race time expired with Bondi Tram (2200kg) and Extract Digit (4400kg) within ten minutes of the finish line. La Vida (5400kg) was a long way behind.

What does this mean for the series results? I don't know. If we managed a podium finish and beat La Vida - 1st place. But since only 2 boats finished, they receive points as normal and everyone else gets points effectively equal to last place. 

I'll have to wait until the prize giving, but my unofficial calculations say there must be 3 boats within 1 point of each other.

[keltik]

Race report - open series round 8

Conditions were much nicer than Saturday. 10-15kts of wind.

Didn't see any action shots of our boat as the guy with the best photos dropped his phone in the sea mid race. So here's a nice photo of Synergy.

Anyways, we had one crew member call in sick and another couldn't make it so had 3 on board. 

Here's the course. Starting at the right side, going to the far left, back to the middle, back to the far left, around to the bottom right then top right and across the line. 

The yellow track shows where we got the symmetric spinnaker up.  2 hoists and drops with only 3 people on board meant I was running around like a 1 armed paper hanger.

We passed Synergy with ease and started hunting down La Vida. Which brings us to best part of the weekend.  Here's a diagram for the play by play;

At number 1 we were alongside La Vida and slowly passing them. They make a mad scramble to get the Spinnaker hoisted which was a gutsy call for the short run to point 2.  I called out "if you guys pull this off, you deserve the win". They shouted back "if we don't try, we've lost".

They got that spinnaker up, gained enough speed to be a boat length ahead of us by number 2, 1 point for La Vida. 

We did the v8 supercar style criss-cross coming into the mark and got on the windward side of La Vida so they are stuck in our wind shadow, 1 point for Extract Digit. 

At number 3 they tacked early and ran further into the shallows on the way to number 4, this was a calculated move meaning on the next tack - they were approaching us with the right of way - so could force us to tack to avoid them, 1 point for La Vida. 

The extra tack put us behind by 2 boat lengths but this is where the magic happened.  We were further upwind so could make more speed toward the finish.  La Vida would either need to sail really close to the wind and be slow, or make another tack and lose time, 1 point for Extract Digit.

La Vida chose a third option that I didn't even know was available.  They aimed below the finish line, further off the wind and accelerated as fast as possible, then at the last second, used their 5 tonne of momentum to turn into the wind and sneak around the finish mark beating us by seconds.

 I've been trying to decide what boat to do the Wednesday night racing on. This made the decision easy. I want to be on board with the skipper who can pull off that kind of finish.

[keltik]

Throttle cable repair went OK. I haven't worked selling boat parts for 12 years so I couldn't quite remember the right way to measure the cables. I took the old one in to the boat shop and said get me another one the same.

Here's the end that snapped off;

And here's the new 9 inch shorter cable (guess boat shop person also didn't know how to measure them) fitted to the back of the throttle lever;

You can kinda see the problem here. Red cable is for the gear shift and the black one is throttle. By the nature of the design, the throttle cable has to flex as you go from full ahead (as shown), rotating 180degrees clockwise to full astern...I guess eventually metal fatigue fucks it. The little brass end that connects the cable to the throttle lever was pretty flogged out so I replaced that too.

Found out the cooling water inlet has a strainer screen. 

Yeah that needs a clean.

Much better.

[keltik]

Probably a year ago a good customer gave me a painting. So I finally put that up. 

Got a nice frame made for it to match the rest of the wood. 

And finally fitted a coolant overflow bottle. It never had one so would occasionally dribble some coolant out and I'd have to investigate if it came from the overflow or if something else was leaking.

[keltik]

Had the radio going while I was working,  system voltage was at 12.4v when I started work, dropped to 12.2v after an hour then I glanced at the battery monitor half hour later and it was down to 10.0v

2x6v deep cycle batteries. One was at 6.3v with the other at 3.7v.

Both charged back up to 6.7v pretty quick. I need to decide if the dodgy one is sulphated and maybe recoverable or just plain fucked.

Flushed the toilet a couple times (the on board "sewage treatment" system draws about 25amp) to put some electrical load on the batteries and they behaved. So yeah, no idea. 

[keltik]

Race report - Open series round 9

Forecast 18kts of wind gusting to 25. Started the race with the #2.5 jib and 1st reef in the main. The wife was walking round the mount and snapped a pic shortly after the start. 1st leg was out to sea around the landfall buoy.

As we were heading back into the harbor, I remembered every time I've headed up towards Omokoroa - how much worse the wind gets up there. 

Another boat on the radio heading that way ahead of us withdrew from the race. Ok, conditions are probably a bit sporty up there. We put the 2nd reef in the main.

A few 30kt gusts hit us and put the cabin windows underwater.  No injuries, nothing broken, everyone still smiling. 

The lighter boats couldn't catch us and we made pretty good progress against the rest. Synergy had some problems trying to get round a buoy in the big winds, so we passed them and hunted down Rimfire.  Crossed the finish line just behind them. 

A fairly satisfying 3rd place. The boat that won was an absolute rocketship on the day and outperformed everyone's expectations. 

The final results for the series will be revealed in 2 weeks time. I know we're in the top 5 but its very close. Possibly a podium in the open series thanks to the big winds in race 9, and I'm confident were in the top 3 for the 2 handed series. 

Friday is another haul out to fit the new prop shaft seals.

Started paying the race entry fees for the summer series.

To quote my old man's text message from this morning "I know we spend a lot of time cash and effort with this sailing malarkey but it makes me feel that it's a great life."

[keltik]

Hauled out to replace the prop shaft seals. Jesus fucking Christ what an expensive endeavor that was. 

$450 for the lift out, transport over to a cradle, setting up the cradle, securing the boat, lifting it off the cradle and relaunch. That's reasonable. 

$115 for the drain plug silicone Oring (91) is extortion. The 2x shaft seals (88) are just metric double lipped viton seals with I'm guessing a stainless tension spring...$195 each is a bit rough. 

The seals seal against a removable collar (93) instead of the shaft, clever design. Of course this collar has some 'uuuge wear grooves in it.

New collar is $600 plus another $125 for the 2 Orings inside it (95).

So yeah, I just flipped the seals around and reassembled it. We'll see how that goes.

As luck would have it, the old man just replaced the deep cycle batteries in his campervan and one of them is still good. So will chuck that in the boat this weekend and think about the leaking poo pipe I discovered last weekend.