always gone well in a blow, and I did nothing to ‘mode’ her for light air. I’m feeling pretty good about this because, even without enough practice, my heavy air skills are my best. So we launch and start flying down to the starting area. Mike [Costello] and I are still trying to figure out the foil settings, so we take a couple of shots across the lake trying to lock in what is fast. The loads on the boards make it impossible to adjust the cant angle once we extend the board; we have a 12mm titanium pin that establishes how deep the foil goes and changing it is something we won’t do during the race. To tack or gybe we need to get the highly curved half metre of the head out of the trunk when the board is unloaded. We have to time pulling on a 32:1 cascade with turning the boat. We then unhook the cascade from the board head and pull it up with a 6:1 halyard.
Did I mention that this is a pain in the ass? If we miss the timing we have to come to a complete stop to pull up the board.
32 SEAHORSE
The loads on these hydrofoils are much higher than we anticipated and the force needed to pull them up is massive. We have been breaking stuff all this summer. Halfway to the starting line we rip the carbon fibre hook off the port board. This means in effect that we can’t sail in hydro- foil mode, at least on starboard tack. We can’t even sail in semi-foil mode on starboard. Aethon was designed around getting at least 50 per cent of her displace- ment to be carried by the leeward banana board, so she is a ball of spray without any vertical lift from the boards. So we sail the first race ‘old school’ and get predictably mediocre results, but a 4 is better than a letter score and the week is just starting. For race 2 we decide to use what foils we can when we can. This necessitates a port tack start, which goes off without a hitch. We cross behind Groupama and ahead of Norgador and Axon. We are still searching for the best mode when foiling upwind. We have had some luck putting the bow down and allowing the surplus
side force the foil generates to drive us to windward. According to the GPS track we hurt Frank a bit on the port tack transit of the course. But we stuff up the tack to star- board (see above!) and we round behind Axon and Norgador.
The second beat doesn’t go as well – we are on the outside lane of a shift to the left, and both Axon and Norgador extend. Again we round fourth. Halfway down the run it looks like we have got some back and are about to gybe onto our foiling tack. But our gybe onto port is sloppy. We slow too much and the wing flies across too hard, breaking two of the four flap hinge points. We are screwed. The flap is held at the masthead and at the boom, and nowhere in between. It is bowing out to leeward and will either break in half or take the mast down. We are trying to figure out how to get back to the beach when the topmast hinge rips out and the whole flap falls in the water. I think ‘Bonus!’ The RIB can collect the flap and we can finish using the front of the rig. It will be glorious.
LUKA BARTULOVIC
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