Anyone want to argue Finn sailing keeps you young? Just a few of the striking images from this year’s World Masters in Spain which attracted a 350-boat fleet – one even Sir Robin Knox-Johnston might one day be tempted to be a part of having already raced around the world on an Imoca 60 named Saga! Gus Miller (above left) won the Super Legends division eligible to those aged 80 and above…
the luff, and they wanted it tested in hard conditions. Olaf offered to sell me a suitable sail plus the gear at a discount. I replied, ‘Thanks but no thanks. The rigging lofts in the Caribbean
have broken, twisted roller-furling foils and busted roller gear stacked up like old cordwood. I have a roller-furling system that may be a bit basic but it rolls the headsail up on its own luff wire and it works just fine.’ Olaf pointed out that with a system that rolls up on its own luff
wire, performance when sailing to windward will always be poor because of luff sag from stretch in the halyard and in the luff wire itself. I told him the system I’d evolved over the years eliminated both problems. My headsail luff wire was the same diameter as the headstay. The halyard was two-part wire led to an 18:1 winch. I could set the luff tension so tight that the headstay went slack. After more offers and more refusals from a grumpy yachtsman,
eventually Olaf got hold of me and said Harken really wanted to give the gear a full season’s test in hard sailing conditions. He felt Iolaire and myself were well-known for pushing hard. Now they would give me the gear and a sail for free! Plus Olaf and his engineer would come down and instal it. And if the gear survived a season I would give Harken an endorsement. We had a deal. So came the day… Olaf, engineer, gear and sail arrived down
during the St Thomas charter show so plenty of sailors were standing around watching the installation. All went well until they spread out our brand new yankee to feed it into the foil. The head and tack were not marked and I immediately objected. Olaf said, ‘Nuts, any idiot can tell the tack from the head.’ I attached the sheets and led them to the jib winch on Iolaire’s stern. Olaf hoisted the high- cut yankee, I hauled on the sheet, the sail luffed, I trimmed on more but the sail still luffed… At that point we realised the onlookers
were yelling at us, ‘The sail is hoisted upside down’. With the sail back on the deck I got out my permanent marker. Iolaire used the rig all season. It was one of those really windy
seasons that occur in the eastern Caribbean once every few years. To be honest, I really ‘put the bricks to the gear’* yet the gear always functioned perfectly. Sales of Harken’s large furlers took off and the rest is history. Thirty years later Iolaire has been sold but the gear is still working fine. * Put the bricks to ’em – background: in the 1960s engineers searching for oil in the Middle East did it mostly in caravans of camels. An engineer had missed his caravan but knew where they were going. He went to the U-Haul camel rental depot and asked for a full 10-day camel, not the standard six-day. The camel boss checked the engineer out to make sure he knew his camels and how to handle them, and said he could have a 10-day camel. A couple of weeks later the engineer arrived back at the rental
depo very much worse for wear and fuming, fire coming out of both nostrils and ears. The camel had died after seven days. The engineer had barely survived, finally being rescued by wandering Bedouins. The camel drover insisted he had rented a 10-day camel. Much
argument ensued, until the drover said, ‘Did you brick ’em?’ The engineer said, ‘What’s that?’ The drover explained that as the camel was getting near to the end of his drinking an experienced camel driver would sneak up behind it with two bricks, then slam the bricks together really hard on the poor beast’s testicles. The camel would take a huge inhale of water at the pain and the six-day camel became a 10-day camel. The engineer said, ‘That must hurt.’ To which the drover replied, ‘Only if you get your fingers between the bricks’. The story was pretty well-known among sailors of the 1970s and early 1980s, less so today perhaps…
SEAHORSE 11
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