Slow start

I've been off air for a while but I have been working away on building the team.

At the moment I have 6 team members but realise that this will be a long road to getting an effective team in place. The age profile is a little higher than I originally planned at 53, 53, 52, 50, 49 (myself), 37 and 11 !!. The 11 is my daughter (and only female) and although light and small has found her place on the boat. But all are keen, if a little underskilled. I am helm and can sail and handle the boat. The mainsheet trimmer has many years of racing/sailing under his belt but not as mainsail trimmer and has been out of the racing game for many years. One other can sail - and the others are different levels from beginner - to - never on a boat before - to - have been passengers but no idea how it all works !!!!! So work cut out for us all.

Today 26th June we are two months into the sailing and we are definitely making progress. The 3 non-sailors and my daughter are booked into an intensive "Learn to Sail" course with the Irish National Sailing Club in Dun Laoghaire who will over the next two weeks Wed (eve), Sun All day, Wed Eve, Sun All day bring them through the basics in a lovely Cork 1720 sportboat (I used to sail one of these) and a selection of dayboats. The course is planned to take the four as a crew through the basics of sailing on helm, main and jib throught to racing rules and basics of racing (starts, mark rounding etc.). We will continue to race on the Saturdays.

We are entered in White Sails this year - so no Spinnaker. We will learn to master two sails before we take on the third !. All crew have purchased the North-U Trim book (I have to say the best sail trim book out there by far). I call out some topics during the week and we discuss the topic on the boat before we head out to the race start. We then take a half hour after each race to debrief - ask questions and talk about what went well and not so well.

So how did the first two months go - well quiet a mix ! We have not had it easy - particularly for a new and mainly novice crew - we had it blowing hard on all outings - so far averaging 20-25knots and in many cases gusting 27-30knots. Last weekend we headed out in 27knots and one gust hit us was 41knots. And we had full sails up ! we were really tired and wet when we got back in.  See the attached link - these guys were sailing in the bay about 1nm south of us and with professional crew of 8 and a reef and still managed to capsize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI2iIY61Lc8

So a lot of the time to date has been learning to depower the boat. I have to say Warrior (Beneteau 37.7 or 10R) has just worked out beautifully. She has been patient with us and held up as we learn our way around the controls.

Some observations - We flatten everything and utilise twist to the max (Upwind).
MAINSAIL
- The outhaul back to the white band - interestingly to get it back and the sail flat we have had to use one of the reefing lines (attached to the clew of the main) as the normal outhaul control is a line pulled from the mast end of the boom but in heavy wind we simply cannot get enough leverage to flatten the sail. The reefing line to the cockpit winch works well.
- The main halyard and cunningham. We generally sail out and take the cunningham off. We then sail on a beat and set the main halyard to get the draft at about 40%. We then attach the cunningham and use for tuning as conditions change.
- The backstay - we have just had such heavy air to date that we have just had as much bend on as we can just to maintain control - the carbon mast is fantastic and its is easy to apply rake (and to relase speedily as we go off te wind).
- The kicker - a must off-wind control but our achilles heel on a number of occasions, particularly last weekend. It is just so easy to forget to release the kicker. This takes so much control away from the mainsheet trimmer as he attempts to depower. The control lines runs back to the centre of the coach roof / cockpit but on a number of occasions now we have been overpowered in a gust, dropped the traveller, then the mainsheet and still turned up violently (luckily never hitting anyone) only to realise the kicker was keeping the upper part of the mainsail powered up. That 5-10seconds staring at each other wondering why we are not back in control has cost us dearly on a number of occasions. Last weekend we were hit by 40knots+ gusts we had just crossed the finish line and headed for home. We eased everything as we reached off - then we were hit by a mere 30+knot gust. We eased further and still continued to round up, but before we could cry "the kicker", one of the blocks exploded under the load. We now have great respect for the kicker and the pit (my 11 year old and fast becoming key to tactics as we race - that another days story) now has the primary responsibility to be ready to release on call.

JIB
- We have a non-overlapping foresail and get the advantage in our IRC handicap. However we pay dearly going down wind in a non-spinnaker class.
- We are experimenting going off wind 40 degrees or so which definitely gives us speed but we still have not worked out whether we are gaining overall.
- The cars for the jib are simply to short. In heavy wind we run the jib sheets back to blocks about 3 feet back from the rear of the blocks. When in the cars we simply could not depower and get any real twist. The cars are just so short cars - not sure what we are doing wrong here ! We are looking for advice from other 34.7/10R owners. With the car back as far as possible we seem to have too much downward pull on the sail and once we try to harden up we fully power the sail up with little or no twist.

HELM
- I have yet to find a comfortable and useful position to helm from. To see the tell-tales I have to sit to leeward but in all the heavy air we have had to date and with the novice crew, I have found that I have to stand and watch and call instructions - but this will change as the crew get more accustomed to their roles.

Overall 8 weeks in - love the boat and feel we will make her proud in a season or two. 

Home at Last

With one week to go before the open of the Dublin Bay racing I really needed to get Warrior home. It was difficult to find crew at short notice so my two brothers volunteered (neither having anything but the most basic sailing experience - Niall, the most experienced, was last on a dinghy about 25 years ago) for the 280nm passage from Plymouth to Dun Laoghaire Dublin. I sent the passage plan to the Dublin Coast Guard on Wed night and we flew out from Dublin Airport on Thursday evening for Exeter arriving at the marina about 11pm 18th April. We got up early on Saturday morning and the two boys provisioned while I prepared the boat. We let the line go at 11:00 and headed for the fuel pontoon. The harbourmaster said we should head around the pontoons and over to the fuel berth where they would be waiting for us. So foolishly I simply followed his instructions to the letter (not checking the charts) as I was simply berth hopping ! - we motored around and there was a power boat taking on a large amount of fuel. I watched on as I thought thank goodness I was not paying for that fuel load. To the right of the fuel berth were the floating pontoons - anchored about 25mtrs from the fuel pontoon. We had come inside them rather than around them as it seemed the direct route to the fuel pontoon. As we had to wait I decided to motor around them and come back around to fuel. It was about 1.5hrs before high tide. As we passed the pontoon we ran around (softly on mud). GREAT. I noticed the guy on the fuel pontoon waving for me to head back the other way. GREAT. I got my brothers to heel the boat over to port and eventually we managed to motor off in the direction we came in. At this stage the fuel berth was free and we tied up. I said to the guy fueling us that we were instructed to go around the pontoons to which he said "Thats correct - but I would not go around THOSE pontoons as the other side dries out" - he went on to say they were there temporarily while some new berths were being put in place !

Plenty of visits from Dolphins over the two days

We sailed out into a building F4 with forecast for F6-7. I just needed to get around Lands End before the tide turned. The weather started up with a vengence and but we were well reefed and once again Warrior handled herself beautifully. The two boys suffered a little from the battering but fair due to both as they weathered the storm well. The storm blew out by midnight and all changed to a glassy beautiful night with the moon lighting the sea for us. We started up the motor and headed up the English coast. About 9am we noticed that the fuel guage was still showing full and we had 200nm of motoring to do if this weather stayed as is. With 60-70ltrs in the tank there should be ample but to be sure I called into Milford Haven (Milford Marina) to top up. We had about a 15 minute wait for the lock gates, and were in and out within a half hour. The Marina guys were brilliant ferrying us up to the office to pay so that we did not have to wait.

We motored for another few hours before the winds started to build again. F6 forecast to hit by morning. At this stage we were looking forward to some wind again (well I was). We had F4-5 most of the night and a lovely passage with the wind building to F5-6 for the last hour of the voyage. We tied up in Dun Laoghaire at 9:30 and were sitting in Avoca restaurant in Monkstown having a well deserved full Irish Breakfast by 10:30. A fine 46 hour passage.

Home at last - tied up in Dun Laoghaire Marina

And now to get a team together ...