Friday, October 31, 2014

Technique: Tuning, reference shots


photo 1-2
 

Top photos: V1 34, D1 0, Headstay Default, Left = no backstay, right = lots
Top photos: V1 40, D1 1, Headstay Default, Left = no backstay, right = lots

Not a huge amount of difference in the base setting, I'm still amazed at the bend with a bunch of backstay on!

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Race: The Rick Johnson Memorial



The Rick Johnson memorial regatta marked a year racing Kraken. Looking good the day before three crew withdrew last minute ........ so we sailed with five on board.

Winds were 9-13 knots all day and we got some lovely sailing in. Sarah took on the foredeck, and mast and will probably have a few bruises to show tomorrow  but did great in a jump in at the deep end situation. The rest of us jumped around the back of the boat trying not to step on each other's toes too much. I'm aching and I was behind the wheel most of the time!

With three races we placed 2/4, 2/4, 2/4 in class and out of the 7 boats racing 2nd on overall corrected time. This was a smaller fleet than last year where I seem to remember placing 7/8.

Starts - not terrible, a bit slow at the first one, a little late on the second (though we may have won it?). Second by a few seconds on the last but fairly quickly powered over Briar Rose.

Upwind - good boat speed and pointing. Overpowered above 10 knots but mostly controllable with traveller. Did not do a good job tracking the shifts but did do a good job covering Shamen and pulled off the best lee bow on them to date. Gringo beat us one upwind getting inside at the top mark but otherwise I think we won all three initial beats and we passed Gringo at that top mark anyway. The new tuning seemed to work really well, but probably could have tightened the rig more than I did after the first race. Overall we were pointing as high as everyone else and going as fast, or a little faster so I'm not going to complain too much, just keep pushing this aspect.

Downwind boat speed seemed okay. We had the pole too low and sometimes had the sheet tweaked needlessly. Maneuvers were tricky and overall stressful on everyone as shorthanded and lacking experience sailing this way but we survived and didn't break anything (though I'll be going up the mast this week to bring a halyard back to earth!).

Hopefully we learnt enough to improve next time though.

The Oceanside "C" leeward mark bites us more than any other leeward mark. I don't know why. Going to have to go and sprinkle some Kraken rum around it. It bit us both times today, once a nibble, the second time a big chomp.



Still - second and close to Shamen in first place in two out of three races despite being shorthanded. Actually quite awesome to have made so many mistakes and be so close to them. Next year!

Here are some bonus dolphins that joined us while milling around between races:



Wind: 8 -> 13 knots
Rig: Vs -31, Ds hand tight

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Race: Volvo Ocean Race

This probably won't be my last shout out to this race before it's over. Right now the boats are heading past the coast of Africa and aiming for the trade winds on their first leg. Racing has been tight though from today the spread of the the 7 boat fleet has gone from less than 10nm after five days racing to nearly 30.

They are pushing out a load of videos also - all viewable on their website.

There have been lots of lead changes over the last few days and it can be followed on their rather snazzy app - below is a iPhone5 screen shot. Personally I'm shooting for SCA (all girls, was leading a couple of times but currently at the back) and DongFeng (mostly grizzled round eyes but a couple of Chinese sailors on board) who were at the back of the pack but are currently leading.

Displaying image1.PNG


Here's a longer video introducing some of the sailors and teams.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Gear: Wind Transducer Woes (Update.2).

Blah.

After dragging a hose up the mast and spraying down the wind transducer a couple of times it hung on until the Beneteau cup. Prior to the first race it stopped, but then gamefully worked during most of the racing bar a couple of slow downwind sections but on the way home reaching at 7+ knots it just gave up the ghost.

So this time I took it off and cleaned it "properly".

Getting it off took two trips up the mast as the screws holding it on were pretty stuck. A second attempt with lube and an impact screwdriver did the trick.

Once off I took it home and stuck it in the kitchen sink and flushed lots of simple green through it. Starting off with it fairly hard to turn (friction by hand and nothing if you blew on it) things loosened up and now I'm happy say it needs just a whisper to get going.

You can see how dirty it had got in the pictures below. Much cleaner after a good wipe down!

The smoke in the middle of the panorama was due to a helicopter crash on Camp Pendleton.





Edit: Since cleaning the transducer has stirred in the slightest breeze and starts moving before any of the others I see in the harbor around Kraken. I'll write a post up about how I approach climbing the mast once I get some good pictures of the equipment.

Technique: Tuning

Sailing today in super light winds (2-6 knots) it seemed like there was some power and the boat kept moving but honestly it's difficult to know exactly until tried out against other boats.

Before the Vs were at 47, I brought them down to 37 then while we were sailing down to 35 on the loos gauge. Post sail I dropped even further to 31, the NS guide for 4-8knots of wind.

Something that seemed interesting to me was that looking at the sail with the eye and then with a photo the depth seems different.



Looking at this is seems the draft was further aft than I wanted, though I did want it aft in the light winds and gentle seas.

Chick from Kea recommends running a little looser (2-3 on the gauge) than the tuning guide, given his local dominance that might be some good advice...

A reference picture from North Sail's guide for light-medium wind mainsail tuning is below. Draft is further forwards and the leech is more closed.


We'll see if the folks at sailnet can come up with some interesting comparisons.

Edit: Adding an image of mast bend with the shrouds set to 34. You can see a slight bend that seems fairly high up in the mast.



Thursday, October 9, 2014

Technique: Tuning

Lol.

Finally had a proper look at the tuning on the boat. Assuming my LOOS gauge is roughly accurate we were setup for about 20knots of breeze, not the usual <10 we get. Not only that but the tension on the D1s was unbalanced and far too low so in the stronger winds we were probably still getting a load of side bend, just without the curve of the mast. I think.... this tuning thing is still a bit of a mystery.

I loosened up the Vs and D1s (outer masthead and lower diagonals). It took a while to get used to the way adjusting one side directly effects the other, so to reach a desired tension with a balanced finished result you need to progressively work on each side.

At the same time I did push the V's a little to the starboard side as the mast wasn't quite centered. It's closer now but I think I can push it some more.

Hopefully it's still straight....

Will be very interesting to see what difference this change makes this weekend.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Technique: Tuning

North sails new tuning guide for the 36.7 features a picture of Kraken and a nice complement. We were going well upwind that race, our problems were all downwind, hopefully improved since then!


Reason I'm looking at it is that this is one of the next parts to racing Kraken that I'm going to start pushing. Racing at the weekend I felt we could have got more depth into the main in the light conditions, straightening the mast could have helped. Racing in the Beneteau Cup we were a little over powered at times, but then again underpowered at other times. Re-tuning between races might have helped keep us in the groove, improving pointing in stronger winds and power in lighter conditions.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Technique/Gear: Two spin sheets or one

When we started sailing Kraken she was equipped with sheets and tweakers, one sheet per clew and tweakers to bring the pole side down.

Our initial gybe approach followed the dip pole setup that I was most used to, so we added lazy sheets and guys.

A year into racing and while our gybes have improved significantly we're still not as smooth as we could be. While the fordeck seems pretty comfortable with end for end (we switched back) gybing using the lazy sheets there are often mistakes made in the cockpit, lines loosed leaving clews un constrained, wrong lines being pulled post gybe.

So we're going back to lines and tweakers. Initial tests have been positive though the wind too light too really tell.

The main concern is going to be how it affects the spinnaker when the foredeck crew are attaching to the new line, which will be active.

If I don't change things up every month or two... everyone would get complacent.

One other change I've made is that the downhaul can now be easily converted to a fore-guy in a few seconds. We've found that in gusty conditions, like those found under Point Loma where we race fairly frequently, the pole tends to dance around a bit, something that the foreguy tensioned against the afterguy alleviates. On the other hand the fore-guy setup makes setting and dousing harder and is an extra complication with frequent maneuvers. Now it's easy for us to prioritize tip control over the ease of use if desired, for instance in gusty conditions or on long spinnaker runs and reaches.

Gear: The importance of Cloth Weight

We were in a hot and sticky and suprisingly long race at the weekend - 6 hours to complete a 15 mile course.

There were only five boats in the race and we were the second fastest boat. With the wind shifting from offshore to weak onshore and a pursuit start my guess was we'd lose our lead over Gringo right at the beginning, quickly overtake the slower boats and end up in second place. We did end up in second place but didn't get there in the manner I thought.

The first leg was 2.5 miles slightly above close hauled. We made some good wind choices in 4-6 knots of breeze and some experiments with twist kept us moving nicely, rebuilding our lead over Gringo.

The second leg started deep downwind, and as the wind shifted south ended tacking upwind in 2-4 knots of breeze. During the downwind phase Gringo closed right down on us but once upwind again we held our own and even stretched out a couple of times until losing our advantage by tacking one too many times at the end (we tacked to miss a hole that gringo ploughed through - ploughing was the better choice as it saved two slow tacks).

Round the leeward (now windward!) mark we gybe set, lost all our speed and watch Gringo get their spinnaker pulling faster and pull away. During the rest of this leg breeze was generally below 4 knots and we watch Gringo continue to build that lead while our spinnaker hung like a limp rag.

Lesson 1 - in light air don't gybe set under another boat - losing all boat speed. For a moment there with the current against us we were completely stopped (I was watching a lobster bouy right next to us, and wondering if we were going to drift back into Mainbrace who was anchored for a mark).

Eventually we got bored and dropped the spinnaker, finding us sailing higher but faster with the Genoa. Then we pulled up the lighter spinnker that I generally only practice with on the basis it's pretty blown out and....

... went from 2 knots of boat speed to 4.

The spinnaker just held up better in the wind. Had shape. Got the boat moving and generating more breeze.

Lesson 2 - cloth weight is critical in light air, even if the fabric itself is in slightly worse condition.

We're ordering a new light air spinnaker form North at the moment. Until we get it though our current .5oz will be the goto sail below 6 knots (perhaps 8?).

I think we'd have won the race with the right sail. Pretty excited by the difference this new sail is going to make, it's slightly deeper section and light cloth should really help in our light air races.