The Tybee 500
On our way through the surf. Jon’s not making a fashion statement with the straw hat. It was really sunny, and that was good relief for him.
My good friend Jonathan Farrar and I decided to race the Tybee 500 this past May. The Tybee is a beach cat race up the coast of Florida, starting in Islamorada, Florida, and ending in Tybee Island Georgia, which is just East of Savannah. The start of the race has varied over the years, so this year’s race was actually closer to 540 miles. The course is divided into 6 legs, starting and finishing on the beach each day. Both starting and finishing can be quite exciting, depending on how big the surf is on a given day.
This year 24 teams entered the Tybee 500 in two classes, the NACRA 20 and the Formula 18. The majority of the fleet was racing in NACRA 20’s (as were Jon and I), but the F-18 proved to be the boat to be racing, as the top three finishing positions were held by F-18 sailors. Of course, winning a race such as this requires much more than choosing the correct boat. One needs time on the water, physical training, proper boat preparation, and a very capable pit crew. Each leg starts at 10 AM, and on light air days, teams are finishing well into the evening (our longest day found us hitting the finish line at 11:59 PM). On shore assistance is required for boat preparation, and for help with breakdowns.
Jon and I had two sponsors for the event. Our title sponsor, Key Sailing, is a catamaran dealer and water sports rental business in Pensacola Florida. Owned and operated by Kirk Newkirk, Key Sailing operates parasailing boats, rents wave runners, sailboats, and powerboats, and sells an variety of sailboats and sailing equipment. Key Sailing is in an ideal location on Pensacola Beach, and is certainly worth visiting when vacationing on Florida’s panhandle. More information can be found at www.keysailing.com
Our secondary sponsor, The Chicago Match Race Center, is located in Belmont Harbor, right on Chicago’s city front. The facility is host to match racing regattas and training from May through September. Sailing takes place in the CMRC’s fleet of Tom 28’s, specifically designed for match racing. Boats are also available for corporate team building activities. Event and membership information can be found at www.chicagomatchracecenter.com.
As team Key Sailing, Jon and I had high hopes, but we did not achieve. We finished 14th overall, and we were the 9th NACRA 20. We did learn a lot from our experience, and we will prepare for this race much differently next time around. Furthermore, we really enjoyed the race. We had a great experience sailing for Kirk Newkirk and his gang at Key Sailing, and we enjoyed the camaraderie that exists among all the Tybee 500 participants. We are looking forward to entering this race again.
Flying a hull across the finish line at in Jupiter.
News from the Multihull World
This posting was made on March 6th. Check back for the next posting on March 24th.
Congratulations to Darren Bundock and Glen Ashby on their victory at the Tornado World Championships in
Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby during a training session.
Other notable finishes at the event include
Congratulations also to Oscar and Kevin, who finished 2nd at the Tornado Worlds. They have been working very hard for several years now, and clearly it has paid off. It is great to see them with such a solid result at a major championship!
Fernando Echavarri and Anton Paz of Spain, who finished 7th at the Takapuna Worlds. Fernando and Anton are currently ranked 2nd in the ISAK Tornado rankings.
The
Randy launching his new creation during the Everglades Challenge.
My buddy Randy Smythe entered a funky race known as the Everglades Challenge earlier this month. It was pretty much an anything goes sail and paddle race down the West Coast of Florida. At intervals, the competitors were required to pass through check points which were often located inside of narrow channels and mangrove areas. Randy built the boat shown above specifically for the event. The central hull of his trimaran is an A-Cat hull. He built the outside hulls himself. If I remember correctly, the mast is from an A-Cat, but of course, he built a jib and spinnaker for the boat as well. The boat is over 18 feet wide counting the racks, so he figured it was not necessary to add a trapeze. I guess he was smoking right along, winning the race before he broke down.
Two-time Worrel 1000 Champion Jamie Livingston won the race sailing with Steve Longmire in a Tornado. Randy won the Worrel 6 times, but he entered most of those races with more conventional boats.
International Multihull Council
Feeling disenfranchised, some multihull sailors have gotten together and started a new organization - the International Multihull Council. The following is an excerpt from a press release I was sent regarding the formation of the IMC,
“The decision of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) to exclude any Multihull Event from the 2012 Olympic Games has shown that we cannot entirely rely on others to promote our interests, so [we] need to establish our own organisation to do so. As there is no representation for Multihulls within ISAF, either formally through a Multihull Committee, or informally, through the interests of individual Councillors, national multihull associations from several leading ISAF Member National Authorities (MNA) have jointly founded the IMC.”
Sailing on a Spaceship
Just after I graduated from Boston University, I decided to charter a Tornado for the 2000 Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Jon Baker and I (we were competitors in college while he was at Tufts University), made plans to race the regatta together. We chartered a boat from Richard Feeny, who took us out for our first sail a couple of days before the regatta. Neither of us had ever been on a multihull before. All three of us went on the boat for our orientation sail. There was not much breeze at all when we left the beach that day at the Miami Yacht Club.
Every type of boat has its own characteristics which make it feel a little bit different. The length, beam, sail area, boat weight, and all the other design variables make each boat sail in a unique fashion. On the other hand, a boat is a boat. Right? I thought differently about five minutes into that sail. We got one puff (which was probably no more than 6 knots), the boat began to fly a hull, and I felt like I had gotten whiplash (I kind of wanted a seat belt). The ease of acceleration was so foreign to me. It was amazing how effortlesssly the boat wanted to go forward. I learned later why the Tornado is so efficient.
Its dimensions are,
Length – 20’
Beam – 10’
Total Boat Weight – 155 kilos (341 pounds)
Mast Height – 30’
Sail Area – mainsail – 16.35 sq. meters (176 sq. ft.)
Jib – 5.29 sq. meters (57 sq. ft.)
Spinnaker – 25.77 sq. meters (277 sq. ft.)
Crew – 2 (average crew weight of about 320 pounds)
Trapeze – 2
Considering the numbers, a couple of things become apparent.
Boat Weight - At 20 feet long, and weighing in at 341 pounds, it is a very light boat. Compare this to two other very strong racing classes, the Lightning – 20 feet long, 960 pounds, and the Melges 24 – 24 feet long, 1780 pounds.
Crew Weight – I state the average crew weight at about 320 pounds, although that may not be totally accurate. But the range of crew weights in the fleet is something like 300 pounds up to about 360. The Tornado is a big boat with a lot of sail area for two people. But with two trapezes and a 10 foot beam, your 320 pounds exerts plenty of leverage. This is another odd sensation for the first time Tornado sailor, your head is really far from the middle of the boat when out on the wire. Almost all production beach cats are no wider than 8′ 6″, the legal width for trailering down a road. A Tornado is more time consuming to rig and derig, because its beams must be removed for trailering. But it is much faster than comparable beach cats in breeze because of its wider beam.
High Aspect Sails – The Tornado’s 30’ tall rig allows for a very efficient sail plan.
There are some other important factors not obvious from looking at the boat’s dimensions. One comes to mind pretty quickly - catamarans can fly a hull. When a multihull flies a hull, its wetted surface is reduced dramatically, and the boat goes faster. Another factor is less obvious when watching a catamaran sail, but readily apparent when onboard – the rig rotates. Mast rotation dramatically increases the efficiency of the mainsail. On any boat where the mast does not rotate (which is most sailboats), the mainsail area immediately aft of the mast is not working efficiently (and on some boats, hardly at all) because the mast is disturbing the airflow over that part of the sail. By allowing the mast to rotate, one can position the mast so it allows the wind to flow correctly over the entire mainsail. Equally as important, when the mast is rotated at the correct angle, the wind flows efficiently around the mast itself and so it also creates lift. Thus, rotating rigs make the mainsail more efficient, and they really add area to the sail plan too. This is why all multihull handicap systems require the mast height and mast chord length to be submitted when assigning ratings. Rotating masts are counted as sail area.
That day of our first sail was not quite sensational enough to make me think I was “sailing on a spaceship”, as the title of this article suggests. It was the second day that made me think that. The breeze was up, probably about 20 knots steady, with gusts that were higher. Feeny was probably having second thoughts about having chartered his boat to us. The rest of the fleet was dying to see what would happen when we left the beach. To put things in context, it was January of 2000, and the 2000 US Olympic Selection was scheduled for April of that year. The fleet was fully active, and at the top of their game after having campaigned for the previous years. And they were pleasantly surprised to get some unexpected entertainment from a few rookies (actually, everyone was very helpful with tips as they were excited to welcome new faces to the class, but they were probably also trying to ensure that we wouldn’t crash into them on the race course).
Zack Leonard suggested we sail around Key Biscayne because that was a “nice, easy” training run. But it also meant we would have to sail out Government Cut. Uh, maybe not on our second day. Finally, we decided we would stay in the enclosed area around the Miami Yacht Club. So leaving the dock, with some assistance from Feeny, and some grinning spectators on the beach, we set out for our sail. We made a small island near Star Island our first destination. That sent us downwind first. We had our instructions, including, “weight back downwind.” The first puff hit us, the bows dug in, the rudders came out, and we understood what “weight back” meant. Clinging to the rear beam, I was trying to remember if we knew how to right the boat from a capsize (I was pretty sure we didn’t). Spray was shooting off the hulls like a firehose; waves were exploding through the trampoline. I did not think I had enough hands to hold on. Then … we had to gybe.
Gybing is actually a relatively safe heavy air move in a catamaran, but we did not know it at the time. The helm went over, the boat was slowly turning, but the mainsail wasn’t coming over. What gives? Suddenly then, “BANG!!” The traveler ripped across the boat, from all the way to leeward on one side to all the way to leeward on the other. We had only been on the water for about 90 seconds, but all the little tips and tricks we were told took on new importance. The one about keeping clear of the traveler car popped back into my head, after watching it whiz by my face. Feeny did mention you could break a finger or hand there (I thought he was exaggerating, but not really).
Much to our dismay, we had to gybe several more times on our way to the monument, as we were sailing in and out of moored boats and other traffic. We managed to stay upright, and not kill ourselves, or anyone else. Although I think we only stayed out for about 30 minutes or so. We had enough excitement for day #2. By the time we had completed one downwind and one upwind run, we wondered if we were on a machine with a mind of its own. The difference was so big to me that we might as well have been a spaceship or an airplane.
After that day, I thought sailing Tornados was like playing a different sport; it seemed so much different than “regular” sailing. But then I sailed the boat for a while, and became used to its sailing characteristics. Although that process did take a while, and came at the costs of bumps, bruises, and broken equipment, I thought again that a “boat is a boat”. This transition from collegiate sailing to Tornado sailing was the same as the transition from any one class to any other. Any class transition requires one to learn heaps of new things (although there are some exceptional sailors who can win in new classes from day one). But once one gets experience sailing a particular boat, it becomes sailboat racing again. You need good boathandling, good boatspeed, and sound tactics if you want to win races.
A couple of years after my first sail on a Tornado, I did have to revisit my belief that “a boat is a boat” again though. This was after my first sail with Steve Clark on his C-Class catamaran Cogito …
Coming Up Next …My next posting will highlight the sailing characteristics of the C-Class Catamaran, and illustrate some of the many interesting development points which have taken place in this class over the years. I know I said this posting would be about the C-Class, but I got carried away with my thoughts about my first sail on a Tornado with Baker.
In Other News …A third boat encountered major problems in the Barcelona Around the World Race. Delta Dore was dismasted yesterday evening in the Southern Ocean. They had to fully cut their rig away an hour later, and mentioned that they were trying to jury rig a sail with some remaining mainsail battens. Forty knot winds, heavy seas, near freezing temperatures, that’s not exactly the most desirable work environment for that kind of troubleshooting. The ISAF web page headline reads, “Southern Ocean Claims Another Victim”, which I thought met someone died. Softer language may have been appropriate there. The current leader Paprec-Vorbac 2 covered 472 miles yesterday. That’s an average of 19.6 MPH!
ISAF Votes to Exclude Multihulls from 2012 Games
ISAF Votes to Exclude Multihulls from the 2012 Games If you do not feel like reading this entire article, please skip to the bottom, and consider visiting the link. This unfortunate decision was made just yesterday at the ISAF annual conference in Portugal. Olympic classes are changed from time to time, and this is always harmful to those who have invested their time and funding in a class that has been excluded from the games. That said, no one would argue that Olympic sailing equipment should remain constant forever.
But the ISAF decision to exclude multihulls from the Olympics is particularly troublesome, not just for multihull enthusiasts, but for the sailing community as a whole. The Tornado is one of the most exciting and athletic classes that will race in the 2008 games (although, given the 2008 venue, it is unlikely that anyone will consider sailing exciting at the upcoming games). The decision to exclude multihulls from the 2012 games will prove counterproductive to sailing’s effort to gain mainstream media attention and to promote its various disciplines.
ISAF President Göran PETERSSON said: “The selection of events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition will have a significant impact on the sport around the world. Sailing has a long and glorious history as an Olympic sport and has been on every Olympic programme since 1908. The ten events chosen for the London Games provide a perfect showcase of the wide range and diversity of sailing. I am certain they will form the backbone of a terrific Olympic Sailing Competition in 2012.” (copied from www.sailing.org).
The 10 events selected for the 2012 Olympics are,
One person dinghy – men
One person dinghy heavy – men
Two person dinghy – men
Two person dinghy high performance – men
Windsurfer – men
Keelboat – men
One person dinghy – women
Two person dinghy – women
Keelboat, match racing – women
Windsurfer – women
Five dinghy classes, 2 keelboat classes, 2 boardsailing classes, 1 skiff class.
I do not mean to say that the Tornado is a better boat than the Finn, Star, or whatever classes will ultimately be selected to for the above events. But it does not make sense to include 5 dinghy classes, and exclude the only multihull class. At least the boards and the 49er survived the vote.
This is not exactly a “showcase of the wide range and diversity of sailing,” that the ISAF President claims it is. Excluding an Olympic class is a difficult decision, and it did need to be done. That’s fine, but to do so, and then try to tell us the selected classes showcase sailing’s diversity is not right.
There is one possibility, although remote, that the selected events could be changed. The slate the ISAF council chose needs to be approved by the International Olympic Committee. The British Nacra class has organized a petition that will be sent to the IOC. If you are interested, you can sign the petition at the link below. http://www.asnr29.dsl.pipex.com/UKCRA_Press_Release_20071110.doc