Monthly Archives: August 2016

She likes her boat 

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That’s the co-owner in the purple hat, enjoying her first sail on her new ship. And how nice to share the day with her pal Leslie!

As a student sailor, Jeanne asked for a job aboard but I countered with asking her to get a feel for the boat on all points of sail without worrying about techniques or traffic. Charlie came to sail (already the Ravenswing veteran co-driver) and RickW sailed aboard for his first time. 

The Marin waters provided ideal sailing today – flat seas, lots of boats to catch, breeze to charge upwind at 9kts, and full sunshine. With lots of hands aboard, the owners got to relax and check out various places to sit. Jeanne is the first to sail from the aft swim steps, and it’s a great little spot. With the jib reefed, the clew is up high yielding lots of comfortable foredeck. Compare last week’s photo with this and see we got the excess sail properly tied and zipped in to its cover. 

Full main and reefed jib is very comfortable with apparent wind in the teens. So much to learn about trimming this mainsail; here it’s getting better but you’ll see we couldn’t get halyard tension:

If you can zoom in to the top you’ll see SOMEone attached the 2:1 block for the halyard to the wrong spot on the fancy Skateaway Design headboard, so we lost 5″ of upward travel. Fixed that back at the dock afterwards – the day was too nice to stop, douse the sail and redo it underway :)

As we headed for Sausalito I wrestled my tiller away from the guys and spiced things up with a full charge up the channel, way above the motoring speed limit, dodging all forms of watercraft. The crew anxiously called out every boat and paddle board as if I was a blind man, but we kept on to go get a view of Tom Siebel’s Mod70 tri Orion, Sig45 open deck luxury racing cat, and huge Protector with four 300hp outboards. Wow does that guy put millions in to the sailing habit. 

So while the super rich have staff to keep their boats expertly tuned, the mere mortals have to solve their own heavy weather helm. This morning we installed the shims on the daggerboard head. Definitely tightened the board in the case, but it didn’t help the rounding up. So now it’s on to making rudder changes. Rick is concerned the trim tab may be to blame, and we’ll get the original rudder painted this week to try on Labor Day. We’ll make a new spacer to push the top of the rudder aft and the bottom forward; the axis point may be wrong. Still a worry to solve this nagging issue. 

To cap the day we headed north towards San Quentin in a breeze that did some gusting off the Marin shore. Rick was driving, with his handheld GPS as a speedometer. It’s like a drug, you just want more knots… The water was fairly flat so we cracked off to a reach and hit the gas pedal a bit. 14kts was pretty easy. That’s her new ‘personal best’, and only a reefed jib and baggy main luff

But the best part of the speed run was Jeanne in the cabin enjoying the excitement from a comfortable window-side couch; we’ve come a long way from scary wet rides on the F27. 

Tinkerers, let’s hear your thoughts on the noisy dagger. It’s shimmed and it got that slanted trailing edge a few weeks ago. At 14kts it makes a bloody racket. How are we going to quiet this down (without hiring MOD70 Orion’s shore team)?

A sailboat on a day like this in a place like this is hard to beat.  Leslie’s getting a big view of the Oakland / SF bridge; it’s your turn readers, just drop us a line. 

Reaching for home

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We’ve been asked why no posts lately; it’s just a busy August so far with some out of town volunteer work, college back to school, and numerous nights aboard the boat from whence WordPress won’t publish photos (anyone know WordPress well enough?)  The boat has sailed twice since the mast spreaders fix – two nice daysails. We’ll start you with a little Saturday late afternoon reach to Richmond – 

A big rigging question was peoples’ skepticism on our Vee mainsheet setup. See the red mainsheet behind DonK driving the boat yesterday. 

That’s one line, and each bitter end leads to a winch. Note how the final leg of the left-hand block set feeds the line over to the right-hand side. We’re learning how and when to pull that crossover line to travel the boom windward/leeward. You can do it by hand under lighter sheet loads. But 3 of the 4 sailing days so far have been 20+ knots breeze; for that trimming the windward winch is traveling the boom across the boat and sheeting the leeward winch pulls the boom down (mainsheet tension). The big Andersen ribbed winches hold the mainsheet very well, so if we’re wanting to sail on the edge and have a safety fast “blow the main!” I think two people could each hold an end with four winch wraps and no self-tailer grab. So far I’m really happy with this no-traveler deck arrangement. 

Next we want to figure out the reefing full batten jib. Here it is with the reef put in, but all the excess sail not gathered. It’s very high-clewed, forming a steep diagonal line foot of the sail. 

While it looks easy in the photo to just roll that stuff up, it’s very large and the spectra sailcloth is very stiff (a good thing!). Doing this at sea in deteriorating weather will be a nasty job to be avoided – take the reef way before things get sloppy out there. The horizontal zipper in the photo accepts a cover for the rolled/ folded excess sail when reefed. We’re very much inviting curious, patient sailors out over the next month to trial all these sailing control tweaks. 

Finish work continues. Companionway doors finally replaced the plywood version. 

Coco models the aft cabin entry while Lola’s snout points out the engine controls. 

Note the aft cabin hatch had no exterior hardware – we’re securing it from the inside instead with two barrel bolts

Last week we got our only mellow sail so far. Charlie, Leslie, Griffin and I headed up Racoon Straits for Sausalito. The boat glides upwind in the flatter water and we picked off every 40′ boat we could find. So fun to crawl up to their tails and wave. There was wind out past the Marin shore, but the skipper gybed the boat for home instead – just really wanted ONE zero stress casual sail after five years of F36 angst. I want more days like this. 

Yesterday was Ravenswing’s first “cruise”. Destination McCovey Cove, crew was the business owners from the shops surrounding our build shed of 2012-2016. 
Six aboard, BBQ rocked the 3-day marinade, Marcus’ air chair was a hit, we saw Denard Span’s home run actually splash (might go the rest of life and not be able to see that again – pretty great for lifelong Giants fans on deck). The best was flying the actual World Series 2014 Championship flag that was previously at city hall. Look at the size of our orange flag compared to the boats – it got the attention of the cameras, and thus a screen-shot of the tv broadcast

(Yea, the guy on the GrandBanks anchored way too close which was a problem when we swung in the wind). This gear worked well, and what a joy to push a button!

What we won’t show you was the steep learning curve, including anchor chain-to-rope-rode shackle that can’t go thru windlass (duh!), big billows of excess mainsail when reefing because someone hasn’t installed reefing gather lines, dragging anchor because we didn’t back down on it the first time, jammed up mainsail douse because we weren’t head to wind, and no dishwashing water because the same person who didn’t check the gas tank when we left Napa didn’t check the water tanks Saturday morn. All humble pie, and nothing damaging. 

Finally tonight a nod to Mrs. Carter’s vintage eye. Driving to the ballgame on a cold summer morning sporting a 30+ year old, like new Norwegian float coat in just the right colors. Where does she find this stuff? And at my kind of prices no less. Love ya

Nearby readers, let’s go sailing next weekend. Let me know which day works for you!

Aluminum trailer for sale

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To the fans of Ravenswing, I beg your pardon here with a blatant advertising message. Go grab a snack and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming shortly…

Rick W’s fantastic aluminum boat trailer is now available for sale. It’s a 2009 MagicTilt, made in Florida and commissioned by Bob Gleason at The Multihull Source in Mass. to carry a Corsair 37 cross country. It was stored here in the bay area after Rick launched his boat, and then we borrowed it in 2015 to hold our floats and mast until gathering the parts at the launch assembly point. Before transporting the main hull in June we replaced the bunk carpets and installed LED taillights. In the photos you can see how our 40′ F36 hull extends well beyond the trailer, so an F32/33, or even an F31, would be very secure with the trailer out near the end of the boat. IMG_3193 IMG_3201 IMG_3203
The trailer has readily adjustable bunks to fit many types of boats, and the weight rating is somewhere up around 10,000 lbs (we will have to go over to Napa to read the ID plate if necessary). It cost $9,000, and the listing price today at $4,500. Contact Greg through replies to this site. Thanks!

Upright again

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The KKMI project managers ended their week Friday with a quick lift of Ravenswing’s mast. We had it all ready to simply slide home the two cap shroud and one forestay big clevis pins and then the guys could release the crane. They only charged for 15 minutes of time (good thing, because it’s $300 an hour!)

So let’s rewind that a bit. Here’s the portable laminate repair shop;

First we did a layer of 9oz Doublebias Carbon, then 12oz uni straps crossing over/under the opposite side. These ended shy of the sail track in each side. Then another layer of the DB. 

At this point Keith / Skateaway Designs returned from an east coast voyage on his boat, and opined that these spreaders are putting undue strain on the mast wall by point loading in the center; the only real cure at this point was to extend the spreader root and better disperse the load through the new carbon laminates. So we scrambled at the boatyard to scrounge up some core cell foam and shaped triangle gussets with the little oscillating multi tool. 

Keith’s second point was that it wasn’t good enough to have stopped shy of the track; these really need to be continuous bands that tie the two sides together. Hmmmm, we’re not about to drill holes in our nice new Todes sail track! But there’s 2″ between each of the clips that hold the track to the mast, and about 1/16″ of play between the fitted track and the actual mast surface. Just enough to slide 6oz Carbon uni fabric underneath…

And slip a bit of plastic in there, hold that in place, then slide the carbon back and forth to wet it with epoxy and not have that cement the track to the mast! Thankfully that all worked as intended. 

A bit of fairing and painting (the yard gives a gate key so DIY’ers can stay late in to the night waiting to recoat) and it was soon all done. 

Note to self: it was starboard upper that broke away. That one got an extra 9ozDB layer to approximate the existing fabrics on the other three. Also remember we chose not to do a second fairing pass, so the surface imperfections at the spreader roots are only cosmetic. 

Boat build finishing with no shop looks like this. Bowsprit getting aluminum etched and primed by the side gate 

The Leneman Steps primed on a table outside the downstairs office

The hatch boards and aft cabin ladder being painted in the tent outside the kitchen window

And the first rudder in the garage getting a new leading edge 

This has been sitting 1.5years since Jim Antrim asked me why I made the water-entry point so narrow compared to the overall chord (thickness). The rookie heeded the master and set that aside to fix as the backup rudder. But living with the wind-vane trim tab rudder has shown that one should be saved for ocean passages work, and this first-built rudder should be the daily driver. So we’ll get it finished off in a series of evenings this month. 

While the mast was in the shed we took the boom home and upgraded the things our first heavy weather day pointed out. No photos taken, but we added cross bracing around the winch, at the first reef clew position, and at the mainsheet connection point. Also built a line guide for the reefing line exit sheaves at the outboard end of the boom. Another hit of black paint to obscure all that, and it was back on the car headed to Richmond. 

Where do they put the end-tie slips you ask? WAY OUT at the end of the docks! Not a good idea to carry the 17′ boom out there (about 50lbs with all the gear on it) alone in the 20kt wind. Wheels and workmate bench to the rescue. The locals looked at this like I was nuts. 

By Saturday eve the rig was all back together, main sail bent on, and the lashings tuned to rake the mast back just a little. I’m eager to sail it again and find out if standin more upright lightens up the heavy helm.  Kind of amazing how easy it is to adjust the tuning on this huge (to me anyway) 50′ carbon fiber  mast. 

As the big boat comes in, one of the small ones needs to go. We’re looking to sell our 11′ Topper, great Britain’s answer to the Laser. $500 for a complete, sporty little race and muck about sailboat. If not for you, tell your friends…