Cirrus-ly Excellent Deal!
Recently the dollar has crept closer to the Euro, which is good news for us! An already incredible package put together by Boulogne Conception Marine for the Cirrus R has gotten better. If you’re in the market for a new, fast, ultra-stiff F18, look no further.
CLICK HERE FOR CIRRUS R F18 FEATURES!
Special U.S. Intro Offer
Click on the following link to see the great offer by Boulogne Conception Marine for the Cirrus R F18 delivered at F18 World Championships at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in Long Beach in September 2012. THIS IS A SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY U.S. PRICE!!
Extras Include:
- Extra Carbon Daggerboard $1276.80 Value!
- Extra Carbon Adjustable Tiller Extension $246.05 Value!
- Foam Stern Chocks $106.40 Value!
- Daggerboard Covers $89.11 Value!
- Rudder Covers $89.11 Value!
- Total Extras Value $1,807.47!
** Price in the following price list is in Euros and is subject to change due to exchange rate. The exchange rate has gotten significantly better since the 2012 price list was made! To find the current currency conversion enter the total price here.
Peg’s Blog
As part of our growing relationship with St. Barth Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, I’m ‘guest blogging’ on their website. Here’s my first installation:
John Casey, who is a U.S. Multihull Champion, has fallen in love with St. Barts, too! I am pleased to present his first guest blog with hopes of more to come.
With St. Barthélemy’s rich sailing tradition, being discovered by Columbus in 1493 and used by French pirates to stash Spanish galleon spoils, the eight square mile island has remained a number one world sailing destination.
When I first arrived from Florida in 2009 to sail in the prestigious catamaran regatta, the CataCup, I was taken aback by how unique the island actually was compared to other Caribbean destinations. There was not a piece of trash anywhere. There was no McDonald’s or Subway. There were no people milling around with nothing to do. It felt like a productive island. We arrived at an open island villa built on the side of the mountain. It felt as if the structure itself admired the view as much as I did. At that exact time I thought, “This is a place for me!”
The Knockout
Here is a video from this year’s Bolster Teamrace Knockout in The Netherlands. After a few technical difficulties last year, it looks like they have it together.
Here are the replays if you wanna check them out.
Puma Takes Lead!
This year’s VOR has been the best yet in terms of media coverage, and I’ve been watching it really closely. Groupama has been leading the leg from New Zealand to Brazil for quite some time, but Puma took the lead from them just past the Falkland Islands. Although the other 70s are broken in one way or another, there at least is a battle at the top.
No Wind……No Worries
A few weeks ago at the St. Pete NOOD Regatta we had a day that’s perfect for golf or football, but it was all wrong for our weather dependent sport. Shining sun, mild temperature, sprawling sandy beach, no wind. So the boys got together and started flicking around small boat parts around Spa Beach, just a stones throw from St. Pete Yacht Club. No, we didn’t break any windows or put holes in drying spinnakers, but when the grown ups get involved a small bungee experiment turns into a full fledged campaign to shoot miscellaneous objects a far as possible.
In the end, the little slingshot became a full on mechanized wonder consisting of pulleys, mast stands on trailers, a couple long lengths of bungee and the missing ingredient….the GoPro. Enjoy.
Cats in Southwinds Again!
I was cleaning out the regatta truck today and came across the goody-bag we received from last weekend’s Charlotte Harbor Regatta. The latest copy of Southwinds was in it so I though I’d thumb it through real quick. I’m glad I did. In the racing section was a little piece on the recent Steeplechase. In case you’re wondering…that high trappin’ picture certainly isn’t us. Click to enlarge.
The Real World of Sailing
in Croatia!
Taking the Horn
Since I’ve known him, when I’ve looked into Swiss born Yvan Bougnon’s face, I see a light behind his eyes that I’m not sure if it’s pure excitement or unadulterated madness. And that smile. Is he just happy to be alive or are we going sailing soon? Then I remember, he’s basically a long distance sailing Frenchman. It all makes sense now. I met Yvan quite a few years ago in Morocco when we both did a long distance catamaran race there called Raid Maroc where we sailed from the Mediq on the Med side to Rabat on the Atlantic side, with absolutely insane conditions through the Straight of Gibralter. Really, I thought he was French for a long time because we wouldn’t talk to each other much, just a nod recognizing our inline interests and craziness on the inside. Then like many French we slowly started to talk English and now we have perfectly normal conversations. It’s not that the French don’t like Americans or vice versa, it’s that our French is shit and they are hesitant to speak English so easy unless they know you’re a friend and won’t judge them. Anyway, my point is Yvan is a Frenchman in a Swiss body who is part sailor, adventurer, racer (he earned like 10th at F18 Worlds last year), media hound and money raiser.
Taking a step back in his life, he skippered the ORMA 60 Brossard for years, most of the time singlehanded. See why I thought he was french now? Brossard is a little famous from the video of pulling wakeboarders. Sadly, it ended it’s life against the rocks in Oman stripped of metal like a rhino stripped of tusks.
With no big ship anymore, in 2010 Yvan sailed with Jeremie Larrangerique across the Med on a custom Hobie Fox setting a record for fastest trans-Med on a beachcat. I think there’s actually prize money up now for whoever can beat their time of a little under 53 hours.
In his last adventure this month he teamed up with Sebastien Roubinet, who actually saved him from the overturned Brossard some years ago. That’s probably the kind of guy you want to sail with. Their goal: To round the infamous Cape Horn on a 20′ Nacra F20c. I saw him in the Caribbean last November and asked him how he garnered financing for all of these projects. He looked back at me a little shocked and said, “It’s France, it’s easy for these things.” You see why I thought he was French? Yeah, here in the States it would be damn near impossible to find the funding, but they love their crazy multihull long distance racing in France. Then I asked why Ushaia around the Horn and back. He explained that the human body can stay awake for about 60 hours straight before mad hallucinations set in so 450 miles in one shot is about the maximum considering the surroundings and conditions. I guess he would know. The conditions of the Horn can be impressive with unfun coldness and unpredictable weather. During their rounding this time they actually dropped the main way down on the deck and went on mostly jib for a while. Prudence is probably the way since if they flipped and drifted into the Drake Passage, they’d be seeing iceburgs, and humans don’t generally last long floating in those waters.
Well, they made it and now he’s two for two in the beachcat long distance adventure chase. The next one he wants to do is a World Speed Sailing Record for distance sailed in a beachcat over a 24 hour period in Brazil. I told him when he sets that record I’ll try to break it. That would be a fun one.
Here’s a pretty nice teaser vid for the Horn rounding. The added weight and leverage of the wings makes the F20c a little unhappy I’d say.
Here is a vid of the rounding and small celebration.
Congrats Yvan and Sebastien!
Triple T
Here is a quick video from Adventure Online of the Osprey, a one-off foiling trimaran built by Falcon Marine for a customer that submitted the plans for construction. Sam Bradfield’s crew needed a test platform as part of the Harborwing. Their original work was the Rave trifoiler. The production version of the Rave built by Windrider had some performance issues, because they ended up making it out of rotomolded plastic with metal foils, which made the Rave affordable but heavy. They made a large mainsail in the sailplan to compensate, but the platform ended up being off balance and, really, no fun in lighter wind. In an attempt to get better light wind performance, the designers went another direction.
A Note to Adventure Online: It’s supposed to be about speed, so don’t slow the video down!!!!
They came to Falcon Marine with foil drawings and sketches and Falcon Marine went to work. They had a basic length and width and where they wanted the beams and gave profile drawings for the foils and Falcon Marine had them machined. The rest was working with the client’s liaison, Tom Hammond. Tom would describe what he was looking for and they got together to make it work.
What they ended up with is a 20′ wide x 18′ long trimaran with three ‘T’ foils, similar to a moth. The carbon foils on the fiberglass outer hulls, or amas, are controlled by what’s called a wand. Depending on the ride height, the wand controls the pitch of the trim tab on the back of the horizontal foil, which provides the amount of lift the foil creates. All of the gearing of the wands were constructed by Falcon Marine as well.
The T foil rudder is basically just for stabilization. The fiberglass rudder was the first foil built in the project. Since it’s all one piece (the horizontal foil isn’t glued on after the build) and Falcon Marine uses an infusion process, it was imperative to use fiberglass because the builder can see the infusion process taking place through the fiberglass matt, which can’t be done with carbon. Before they dropped $1000.00 worth of carbon in the mold they had to make sure the flow was right. Once they knew they had full infusion with resin, they then built the carbon foils with the same process, so both amas have carbon foils.
The Osprey is a sloop rig with a sprit for the jib and about 240 ft/sq of Randy Smyth designed sail area. It weighs in at 475 lbs. The mast is one of the first carbon Marstrom built Tornado catamaran masts from when they tested the carbon rig for the Olympics. The crossbeams are also carbon, so all of the high load structural parts are carbon, and the lower load areas are fiberglass. This keeps costs down while testing.
Looking at the video, the crew weight should be further forward once foiling to reduce overall drag. The incidence of the foil is too high with the crew weight back. That’s one thing they drilled into me when I sailed the Moth for the first and only time, “Get your weight forward!” They kept yelling at me. The hulls could probably lift quicker as well if the transoms are squared off to let the water release instead of sucking the transoms in like an old square rigger of the 1600s. It’s actually a simple, stable design in flat water. They can run the jib further in on the track and generally increase mainsheet tension as well. Yep, i’d have that thing boned in!
Here is a pic of it on the trailer:
I know, it looks like a mess, but it give you an idea of the profile view of the foils that are underwater in the video. On the left is the fiberglass rudder and on the right is a carbon foil. The hulls are on the right and on the left are the ‘D’ shaped crossbars.
CataCup Already On The Move!
I just received another great production video from the CataCup as a promo for this year’s event. We only had five boats from North America head to the pristine conditions of St. Barth last November. After doing the event for a couple years now, I have the logistics locked up and this year’s event is going to be even better. It is truly one of the overall top ten regattas in the world. During the last edition, I had so much help from Sotheby’s and St. Barth Properties to get to the event, and I’m looking forward to this year. There are a maximum of 50 entries allowed and when registration opens it takes about 24 hours for all of the spots to be full. We can fit up to 10 boats in the container from Miami, and we need to get all the logistics straight on our end to make it happen. Ask anyone who has done this regatta what they think and their eyes light up. Please shoot me an email if you are interested in participating.
The Cirrus R Has Arrived
Last weekend the Cirrus R debuted at the Tradewinds regatta with Bret and Kenny earning a second place, throwing a 4 and ending with a bullet. They told me how it sailed on Saturday and we made some small adjustments and their performance shot up on Sunday. When I asked Bret how it sailed he said, “It’s like we were on a whole different boat than anybody else, especially downwind where we were lower and faster!” Dalton and I start training on Sunday on the road to F18 Worlds in September 2012.
Photo Credit: Leandro Spina
F18 Euros For The Birds
Well, Canaries to be exact. The F18 Europeans started yesterday with light conditions and Atlantic swell in Grand Canaria. They have a tracker for this one, so there are a few people not getting a whole lot of work done. I actually wanted to do this story on my site so I can access the TRACKER easy. What can I say, I’m lazy and greedy all at once.
My Cirrus R and Magic Marine teammates, Mischa and Bastiaan, had two strong races, but earned BFDs to match yesterday on their brand new orange boat. By the looks of it, most of the fleet was over at the horn, but they found out pretty quick their Netherlands color stands out. So far, the 75-boat fleet is led by a couple of locals and it must be a dream come true for them. Let’s see if the slipper fits. The new Phantom is out there and is showing some speed in second, but the fleet is really strong actually, and second place is with an 8-2. That does show the strength of the fleet.
For resultados you can head here.
The Banque
If you were in the middle of the ocean sailing on your cruising cat, what would be the highlight of the trip? This might come pretty close!
CataCup Day One
We found out how fast our newly rigged F18 is yesterday. We managed a second place in the first race and a fourth in the second. I’m only going over the racing right now but there are plenty more stories, one involving electricity, rain and a steep incline……….
The first race was a close one with Mischa and Edward and in the lighter winds we crept up to the point of almost passing them, but when the breeze came back on from behind the islands they showed a little more speed upwind and they slipped away. It was fantastic conditions with a 14 knot northeasterly with gusts here and there.
Our start in the second race was a little less than desired. It was my fault. I pulled the trigger too late and we had to scratch our way up through the fleet. The good part was that we haven’t been passed yet in the two races. We did all the passing, so we will try to get out in front today to see if anyone can pass St. Barth Properties machine!
You can head to the Catacup website to check us out on a live webcam to watch the action. We’re taking off to the beach right now since racing is supposed to start at 0930. Maybe factoring ‘island time’ it’s more like 1000-1030.
Made It!
After the ordeal in St. Maarten, I finally made it to St. Barth. The ferry ride was pleasurable. I know by now to sit on the leeward side, lower level of the boat. I watched the festivities as people came down from the top with ‘puke bags’ in their hands and people on the windward side of the boat were relentlessly splashed. They liked it at first and tried to play it off, but after a couple of good ones, I had more friends on my side of the boat.
Coming close to the island I saw some familiar rocks jutting from the surface like Neptune’s knuckles. Some we use as marks during our races and I thought, “I’ll see you soon again my friend, be kind to us as we round.”
As we came into Gustavia Harbor, I saw the beach where we rig the boats and the containers waiting to be emptied. With four containers this year supplying 50 boats, it’ll be pandemonium on the little beach.
Here is a view of Gustavia Harbor. They make us sail all the way inside to round a mark. The wind is all over the place in there. It was totally frustrating last year. We were lucky to win the race after drifting around in there for quite some time.
I was greeted right away after customs by my friend Christophe, a hard working, jolly but beastly Frenchman, and we made our way through the twisting roads like we were driving up a vine on the side of the mountainous island. Last night we dined on beef and chicken sausages, baked potatoes, pastries and the thickest cuts of bacon I’ve ever seen! When I saw them for the first time my eyes went wide. Pascale, Christophe’s wife, noticed and explained with a wry smile, “This is how we eat bacon in France.” And I thought we did everything big in the USA!
This morning I went for a run on the rocky, excluded side of the island around a windy bluff with nobody in sight. I saw a natural pool at the bottom of the cliff that I’m going to explore tomorrow morning. Every time I come here I discover something new. I did see a little too much garbage in that area though. Christophe told me it’s because the English islands upwind push their trash into the water sometimes and their garbage dump is in open air so some garbage escapes. I think we should organize a U.S. regatta envoy to clean up that area….working on it.
Flyin’ on the Falcon
Last weekend was the Buzzelli Multihull Rendevous, a huge multihull event with classes such as the Stiletto, F-Boat Trimarans, Waves, Wetas, and of course our portsmouth A fleet, which included some F18s, F16s, Randy Smyth’s Scizzor trimaran and us. Since I sold my Nacra MK2 last week, Matt from Falcon Marine let me borrow his F16 Falcon. Thaaaank You Matt!
The regatta started on Friday with a 35-mile distance race from Sarasota up to Tampa and back. We were a little late for the start, but on the close reach in 10-20 knots of breeze, the F16 took off upwind, bouncing over the waves. I was impressed with how much power stayed in the boat during the lulls even though Dalton and I weighed in at about 330 lbs. The double trap reach was so much fun we didn’t want to turn around. In the first half of the race we passed everyone but Randy’s trimaran. After the turn mark we gained until we were almost even with the tri that we gave a 12 minute lead to, but that was as close as we got. When the wind backed off the light wind designed Scizzor left us in the dust.
Saturday was bouy racing and with a 10-15 knot cool northerly we were excited to get out there. The Falcon performed really well again, outpacing the F18s around the course. Upwind, the helm was light and the Falcon accelerated quickly in the puffs instead of tripping over itself like many other designs. The 12:1 cunningham worked well, and the Glaser mainsail flattened out evenly. I was again surprised with the amount of power the rig created. We were able to hold the upwind line of the F18s in lighter breeze, and could hold a higher line as soon as we single wired.
Downwind I didn’t know what to expect. When you first look at the Falcon, since it doesn’t have much freeboard and even less bow, it looks like it might be prone to pitchpoling. Well, when we were on the boat and looked at the hulls from above it’s a whole different story. There’s plenty of volume in those little hulls. Even in the 15 knot puffs we were never close to putting the bow in, and actually the crew never went behind the rear beam on the trapeze. The volume and flat section between the bow and front crossbar worked well to keep the bow up and spray flying. We were grinning like crazy downwind! In the lulls the F18s did have a little deeper line, but when it was breeze on the Falcon was gone.
Sunday was light and tricky, so there it was more about being in the right place than how fast the boat was. However, when we were in boat-to-boat situations the Falcon shined even when it was single trapeze conditions. In the end, the Falcon performed marvelously to give us a victory with six points to spare for the weekend!
Thanks to the Sarasota Sailing Squadron for inviting us to their event again this year. Last year, we were the only beachcat buzzin around their course. Hopefully, the numbers will grow again next year.
Back To Cali
Tomorrow we leave for the US Multihull Championship for the Hobie Alter Trophy. It’s always an honor to race for the ‘Legend’s’ trophy. Check back during the week for updates.
Convert?
With all of the buzz surrounding multihulls lately, it is not surprising that former ISAF Sailor of the Year and Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, Paige Railey, spends some of her free time on the F16 and F18s. Will we see her on two hulls in the 2016 Big ‘O’? She did place third with John Tomko in the 2009 U.S. Multihull Championship……
Switch Session
Sailing, sailing, sailing. That’s all I do, think and write about. I’ve had enough of it right now. I’m a huge fan of mixed martial arts (MMA) and did quite a bit of training before I left for the cold barren EU a few years ago. I haven’t stopped checking it out though. The biggest problem for me is fights are usually on race weekends and I can’t stay up long enough to catch the main event.
Well, this weekend is one of the biggest fights in quite some time with the welterweight champ of the UFC, Georges St. Pierre, taking on Jake Shields and I have the weekend off. This fight is happening because the UFC bought Strikeforce who Shields had a contract with. St. Pierre is touted as the most well rounded MMA fighter out there and Shields is one of the best Gracie Jiu Jitsu practitioners in the world who hasn’t lost a fight in five years (15 in a row). They both have legendary training routines with world champion training partners. This will be a battle of mental toughness. Just like sailing, whoever makes the least mistakes wins, but unlike our fun little sport someone could get choked or knocked out. I used to think sailing was the most mental game out there, but it’s not. There are more intense fights on the card like Aldo/Hominik, but I don’t wanna write that much.
My MMA training starts again next week as part of my ridiculous weight cut for the Alter Cup in June. What got me going today though wasn’t the videos of fighters getting their ass kicked by a hammer and a earth mover tire while wearing a gas mask, it was a video of one of the ground breakers of MMA, Chuck Liddell, yucking it up. Check it.
F18 Knockout Replay
The live stream wasn’t so good for last weekend’s event, but here is the replay.
Randy Smyth’s Sizzor Tri
There have been a few people asking for up to date pics or vid of Randy’s Sizzor trimaran. I did a quick walk around before the start of the Everglades Challenge this year and had a chance to look at his boat a bit.
AC 45 Breakdown
Check out my latest work in Sail Racing Magazine where I break down the AC45 design, with key designers and Jimmy Spithill. The magazine has a ton of great articles on almost every aspect of sailboat racing, as well as great pics! At only $5.99 an issue it’s a steal.
New Florida Grown A-Cat
From the boys on the west coast of Florida comes a new A-Cat, the ‘O’, designed by O.H. Rodgers and built by O.H., Woody Cope and Rush Bird. It looks quite fast with a wide transom, little rocker and plenty of overall volume. With all the different types of As out there, a Florida boat helps keep the U.S. firmly on the map. Three more are to be popped out soon.
