Royal Western YC Round Britain & Ireland Doublehanded Ra

For all those DF35 issues which do not fit into any of the categories below.
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Gonzo
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 10:58
Your Country: UK, Devon

Royal Western YC Round Britain & Ireland Doublehanded Ra

Post by Gonzo »

Tim and myself are racing Cold Fusion Reloaded, DF35 no. 28 , in the RWYC Double Handed RBI race starting 6th June.
We've added quite a lot of kit - AIS transceiver (Garmin) , HD Radar (Garmin), extra Chartplotter for the chart table (Garmin) to supplement the one on the coachroof, Satellite phone ( Iridium) as well as lots of safety gear.
We've previously raced the boat in the RSYC Biscay Challenge down to North Spain from Southampton as well as a lot of shorter 2 handed races. We also raced 920 Hybrid Cold Fusion in the earlier Santander Express Race.
You can follow our progress at http://www.rwyc.org/oceanic/RBI10 . We are the only Dragonfly , there are 4 Dazcats ( 3 cats and a tri ) , a Corsair 31, a John Shuttleworth designed 43ft Tri and a Schionning 11.6m Cat. There's also 50ish monohulls taking part including 10 Class 40's which have proved to be very fast.
The race starts in Plymouth and then has 48 hour stops in 4 locations before finishing in Plymouth. The stops are Kinsale in Southern Ireland, Barra in the Hebrides, Lerwick in the Shetlands, Lowestoft in East England.
All the boats have a brick on board to monitor progress onto the web site.
We'll try and keep the blog updated as we go around.
As a note to racers - always get your boat weighed. If we had done that before the last Biscay Race we would have won the multihill class. We were actually a lot heavier than the weight the yard quoted, the MOCRA handicap dropped from 1.224 to 1.196.

cheers
Gonzo

ps we do have a fridge for the beer, heating and hot water.
clarivoile
Posts: 50
Joined: Sun 22 Nov 09, 18:49
Your Country: La Rochelle FRANCE

Good trip

Post by clarivoile »

All the best, Gonzo. Keep us informed.
Mika Harju
Posts: 218
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 13:19
Your Country: Finland, Turku

Re: Royal Western YC Round Britain & Ireland Doublehande

Post by Mika Harju »

Gonzo wrote:We were actually a lot heavier than the weight the yard quoted, the MOCRA handicap dropped from 1.224 to 1.196.

cheers
Gonzo

ps we do have a fridge for the beer, heating and hot water.
Beat them! Do not forget the beer.
What is the weight of your DF?
Mika Harju
DF1000 Racing #8
Gonzo
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 10:58
Your Country: UK, Devon

Post by Gonzo »

The boat now weighs 4672 kg , the DF35 Specification quotes 3900 kg
Gonzo
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 10:58
Your Country: UK, Devon

RBI 2010 Progress

Post by Gonzo »

We arrived in Barra, Hebrides, having had a few problems on the way up from Kinsale in Southern Ireland. The jib sheet burst , possibly by contact with the front of the fiberglass housing on the coachroof.A temporary fix kept us racing and I shortened and retied what was now two sheets on arrival. We also did some damage to the jenny with the spreaders but that is now sorted.
Of more concern was doing a sefety check the next day and finding the starboard safety line hanging in the water. The Pin and clip securing it to the main hull had disappeared. They were in place when we arrived at Barra so its a mystery how it came off, rubbing against the warps securing us to the buoy was a possibility but as we reorganised the warps soon after arriving this shouldn't be the cause. One thing that is apparent is that you should carry essential things like spare pins and clips . We managed to scrounge a pin that was slightly too big and we spent quite a long time with a file getting it to fit.
We've also been finding a lot of loose screws around the table. It appears that they are all keen to escape. We've replaced and retightened those we've found but there are still a few missing. We've had a few water leaks, one from a factory fitted deck gland and one from one we did. More sealant should sort it.
I'm not sure exactly where we stand so far in the race but we've achieved 2 3rd places so far. Having looked at the other trimarans competing I can honestly say we are travelling in the most comfort by a long way. the luxury of being able to turn the heating on when cold and wet is fantastic. We have been sailing with the spray hood up the whole time, the "Yellow Brick" Tracker has to be mounted somewhere at the stern and the spray hood frame was the only option - not that we would have raced without it anyway. The other tri's are all in Drysuits and very cold and wet, we've been having cooked meals and the occasional cold beer.
We restart for Lerwick around 12:20.

cheers
Gonzo
Ken
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue 23 Sep 08, 13:08
Your Country: Australia, Bunbury WA

RBIR

Post by Ken »

Gonzo

I followed the Round Britain and Ireland Race from Australia and it was very exciting being able to track you all with Yellowbrick.
I have a lot of admiration for the trimarans getting through the North Sea in such bad weather. How did Cold Fusion Reloaded handle it?

Congratulations on a good race.

Regards
Ken Mills
DF800 MkII Vamos
Gonzo
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 10:58
Your Country: UK, Devon

Post by Gonzo »

The leg to Lerwick was quite eventful. We had to sail south from Barra to clear the Hebrides and then head out to St Kilda which is 40 miles further out into the Atlantic. It seemed to take a long time to get there. Once past Barra we launched the spinnaker, put the wind on the beam and started zig-zagging our way to he Shetlands. We got the boat up to 18.7 knots and were leaving a monohull way behind when the spinnaker disintegrated, just 2 ribbons connected to the halyard. We recovered the remains and continued under genoa for a while. We launched our smaller spinnaker and made decent progress until the shackle on the halyard burst just to the west of the shetlands. It was getting dark and neither of us fancied clinbing the mast in the dark so we sailed the rest of the way using the Genoa. At some point the autopilot gave up the ghost ( mentioned in another thread ) and I spotted that the SeaMe was also not working. We made it into Lerwick without any further problems, although boats arriving over the following 12 hours experienced much stronger winds around the top of the islands.
The spinnaker and genoa were repaired in Lerwick, and spare fuses obtained for the SeaMe. We manually steered for the rest of the race.

The forecast for the next leg was looking nasty. 30 knot winds and a 4.5 metre sea. Paradox and the cats all took tyres with them to tow behind and slow them down. We didn't bother with this approach as we had a drogue for that purpose and for emergency steering, but we didn't use it. By the time we set off the wind was around 25 knots, we had 2 reefs in the main. We did an unexpected gybe at one point and a cleat ripped an 18inch hole in the leading edge of the main. It was getting dark so we reduced to the 3rd reef and carried on. Apparently the web site commented that the Class 40's were hitting 14 knots at this time, with 3rd reef in and a reduced main we were hitting 17.3 . Once it was light we dropped the sails and I used a large adhesive patch to cover both sides of the sail over the rip and stitched it into place as the patches didn't seem to like sticking to the sail for any length of time. It had now become a 12 hourly routine to tighten all the screw holding the table down.
Another thing that needed tightening was the leading nut on the port outrigger, I'd tightened all of these in Barra but the outrigger had started to boom and a gap of about 1/8 inch had appeared. Crawling out with a large spanner and an Allen kwy tied to me wrist soon sorted this.
Dodging Oil Rigs started to be the new game as we approached the Wash. Just south of the Wash the shackle holding the adjustable part of the starboard rear stay together burst. We used the spinnaker halyard as an instant fix to keep the mast up and retied the block directly to the larger shackle. We didn't have the failed shackle to verify that it had burst and not undone itself, but the Yard said they thought it was failure and later examination of the port side shackle showed that to be badly bent so both were replaced and spares put onboard.
The piece of wire above the burst shackle was severally bent so that was replaced in Lowestoft. The remaining part of the leg was slow with adverse tides and very light winds.
The leg from Lowestoft to Plymouth was also slow with several periods of not seeming to get anywhere and one period anchored off the Isle of Wight.
At no time did we feel that the D35 wasn't up to the task, although persistant electrical problems were a nuisance.
Gonzo
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu 02 Nov 06, 10:58
Your Country: UK, Devon

Post by Gonzo »

I forgot to mention that the repaired spinnaker didn't last all that long but while in Lerwick Harvey Bowden had offered to loan us the spinnaker from his D35 and that was waiting for us in Lowestoft.
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