Happy New Year
Yesterday we sailed in top end B rig conditions and then C rig in winds gusting up to 35/40MPH in relatively open water. So much fun. We sailed Craig's narrow boat Nemesis V2, his Chimera update Proteus V1 and my 2 piece Alioth V3. David Lindsay was the third member of the team. During the afternoon we all swopped boats to understand which was faster or slower on the upwind or downwind legs. What became apparent in the C rig conditions is that it did not matter which boat you sailed, they were all pretty much equal with the new narrow boat best in waves with its abilty to cut through rather than punch into them. The wider blue boat showed great speed upwind with the Alioth being the easiest to handle all round. Craig has spotted some small tweaks he wants to make to the narrow boat and will be back on the drawing board to prepare the modified boat by next week . It seems incredible that after 40 years of designing IOM's there is still scope for marginal improvements and Craig has been designing IOM's for several years, but his rate of design development has gone exponential..
Its amazing to think this was the second time we used C rigs this Christmas. Its so good to get some practice and play with the rig.
During the last few days I got to thinking about the best material for the 3D printed boats. Clearly if you want to print a boat and sail it straight away after some sanding, then Polymax PLA is the best material, being robust and able to handle severe shocks. If you are a designer, this has the added advantage that you can watch a design over the weekend and if you want to modify it slightly, update the CAD design, print the hull and have it on the water next weekend. The ESAM pla plus with a covering of gless looks and feels like an epoxy glass boat but much stiffer. This is the material of my replacement blue boat which should be on the water by the weekend. There is a bit of work to do on the rigs as I will need to take 8 to 10 mm off the bottom of the mast to get the booms to sit right on the decks.
Of course having a nice fast boat is one thing but I have still got to get the right mindset to perform better round the course. We were speculating on what makes a boat go fast and Dave came up with:
40% skipper
40% setup
20% hull design
Sounds about right to me.
Proteus V1
Alioth V3
Nemesis V2
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