It helps to be a polymath in the Vendée Globe with good boatbuilding skills part of a very complex equation. Unlike Arkea Paprec, forced to retire when the lower foil cassette mounting parted company, allowing a very considerable quantity of seawater into the boat, it was Apivia’s lower bearing mount that gave way with minimal ingress of water. But skipper Charlie Dalin knew he had to move fast to prevent the escalating damage forcing him out of the race which he then led. In making the repair Dalin was suspended over the side of the boat or below gluing things together – making the exhausting journey back and forth around 25-30 times in all
much wind so I rolled out a bigger sail to go faster. Even so I set the boat up quite conservatively and then… I just slept! ‘I have had a few problems before, but this one put the rest in
perspective. I am glad it is over and I feel I have gained confidence in my ability to fix the boat and I really hope the repair will hold. I now know what the Vendée Globe is about: surviving, managing to carry on with the boat. Boats tend to lose percentages of perfor- mance as you go on and the game is to lose fewer percentages than the opposition. So I hope I won’t lose any more from now on.’
WE’RE HERE – Terry Hutchinson It is quickly getting very real! At this writing we have had a couple of days of practice with the four teams and it truly is the part of the cycle that all teams have been working towards. I cannot really com- ment on others but from an American Magic perspective I can see our strengths and weaknesses against the three other teams. Patriot’s design revolves around a good aerodynamic platform
that works to create a positive surface effect with wind and water. This takes into consideration that we can fly the boat as designed and flight controller Andrew Campbell has done phenomenal work. The next area of development is foils. This one probably has us
a bit confused as Patriot’s foils have followed a logical progression that started with the mule. This progression led us to start with reasonable-sized foil wing 1, to a smaller foil wing 2, and now foil wing 3 which is really a refinement of all that has been learnt. All three foils have bulbs as part of the hydrodynamic solution. The challenge that all teams faced was making these decisions in isolation and completely backing the science. When we look around the harbour we see the two challengers
with reasonably large foils and no real bulb while the Defender has very similar-sized straight foils like Patriot and a smallish bulb. The compromise between straightline performance (small foil) and manoeuvrability (big foil) is the question we are all trying to answer.
Having gone through the last three years operating inside our own bubble it is hard not to always drink out of your own punch bowl when making these decisions. Yet the design team has not been wrong in the predictions and so it is exciting to see the possibilities. In terms of aerodynamics we’ve gained a lot. Patriot has a boom,
Ineos boom, Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand boomless. This is a big one – not necessarily in the ability to achieve the same flying shapes but how you get those shapes. I am confident in what we have done and yet I can see limitations of our set-up versus the competition as the boat has been set up to structurally accept only a certain amount of load. The weight of the boom is less structure inside the yacht versus a boomless option (maybe) which may poten- tially allow for more sheet tension. Again, maybe. But what you can see is that we are all going in the same direction
with flying shapes and our time refining over the racing will be para- mount for success. If the challengers have any advantage it is this fact alone. Racing will make you faster and while at this writing I can tell you the Defender is very fast they don’t have a lot of match experience. The challengers are playing catch-up and will rely on this racing to get faster and it will be interesting to see how much speed can be developed. I can assure you a lot is needed! Finally, the sailing world has lost a lot of great people this year
but most dear to my heart has been the too soon departure of Geoff Ewenson and Kevin Burnham. Geoff was a great sailor, friend and person. A transplant to Annapolis from Newport, he and his wife Mary were an integral part of the Annapolis community. Geoff always had a big smile on his face, and we had one of those relationships that regardless of how much we talked we always just picked up where we left off. In my early J/24 days Geoff was an integral part of some great regattas as he was cutting his teeth at the University of Rhode Island. I miss you, buddy! Kevin Burnham is a legend. There really is no other way to skin
that cat! As a senior in high school Kevin spent a month at my house with Morgan Reeser when they trained for the 470 Nationals out
SEAHORSE 15
CHARLIE DALIN
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