I sailed 013 yesterday for the first time and it served as a reminder of
what each of you will go through as you launch your boats.
The weather has been unusually warm in Seattle lately (mid to upper 50's)
and with too little snow in the mountains to ski, I just couldn't stand it for
another day.
The first mistake was launching without putting on my drysuit. The water is
a bit like standing in a fire--no sensation of cold, just excruciating,
burning pain. I did put it on for sailing.
The second mistake was forgetting how much creep most of these high tech
lines have in them. I tensioned my rig while working on cutting running lines
to the proper length and other miscellaneous stuff. After 15 minutes, the rig
tension was about half on the primaries (now using lightening rope).
Eventually I had to re-splice the primaries because they ran out of
adjustment.
This is a one-time problem and once the line has bedded itself, it doesn't
stretch. The Marlow prestretch used on the caps seemed to stay quite stable
(we'll do some testing one evening in Florida).
The third mistake was the elimination of shrink sleeve or grip tape on the
tiller extensions on the lower halves. This covering provides a bit of
friction when you drop the extensions in the middle of tacks and jibes (a kind
of
autopilot) and without it you have to be much quicker picking up the new
extension. The result is a lack of smoothness caused by too much rushing.
The fourth mistake was to be trying a lot on new innovations in such cold
water with no other boats around. I've eliminated mast tangs on the trap
wires
and cap shrouds and instead, depend entirely on the belief (unproven) that a
figure eight knot on the upper end will not pull through a hole drilled in
the mast. This was going to be tried for the first time in the warm waters of
Florida where the only pain would be the laughter of you guys as the knot
pulled through and dumped me. Instead, I was so worried about what the shock
of hitting the water was going to be like that is was hard to enjoy the sail.
Inspection afterward has convinced me that there is a chance that this is
one of those ideas that might actually work (lighter, better, cheaper is the
mantra).
It was good to be reminded of the anxiety that you'll experience when you
sail your boat for the first couple of times. In addition to worrying about
your rigging and workmanship, you'll be learning to control this high powered
boat for the first time. The clinic in Florida is all about getting you past
this first step to the real fun.
Oh yeah, far too many of the new ideas seemed on first sail to work. This
is really unusual as I consider a 25% success rate on untried ideas to be
excellent. None of these ideas involve anything that you need to drill holes
in
your boat to try and with the exception of the trapeze system, each requires
fewer parts and associated costs. Florida will provide more time to actually
evaluate and we'll discuss them and your ideas down there.
The weather has turned cold again so it looks like Florida may be my next
opportunity to sail 013. See you there.
Bram
|