The work-up continues

Video and the latest from SailRocket and her new solid sail rig

Finally a weather window remained open long enough for us to utilise it. On Wednesday we got our third sail in with the wing. We should have been on the water a lot sooner but the process of adjusting the rigging so the loads are shared turned rather complicated. You have to remember that the rig has to be raised and lowered during sailing activities and this requires the forestay and backstay to be withdrawn into the boat in a controlled manner. All the turn blocks and purchase systems are set up in such a way that by the time they reach the cramped confines of the cockpit they are simplified down to one 6mm Marlow rope fed through a Harken cam cleat. This system also makes it impossible simply to put the rig up and adjust the shroud tension from down below. It has to be done at the top of the mast. Yesterday we raised and lowered the wing seven times in the gusty car park and once on the water.

As it was quite windy in the car park we had Sailrocket lashed down. Handling our wing is nothing like handling a soft sail. It hunts around and turns on and off with the slightest adjustment in angle. It makes us all nervous and reminds me of handling wild animals. If you lose control of a situation then all hell can break loose in an instant.

We had to get these settings right before sailing in any breeze. I wouldn't have gone out otherwise. Our previous two outings showed the settings to be way out so we did our own stretch tests and set the rig according to our own data. With so much wind about the Sth Coast in the last 10 days we haven't had the chance to get the wing out.

Malcolm [Barnsley] had to return to Southampton so the sailing was going to be down to just three of us, Helena [Darvelid], Mark Lloyd and myself... just like the good ol' days with the Doyles/Compotech soft rig. The wind had dropped a lot and swung further south meaning that the course was very broad in our current port-tack configuration. That isn't a real issue now. Simply getting time on the water is and another day of mild weather was probably a good thing. We used the new system of uphauling the rig using a 'boat breaker' type system so that I could focus on maintaining mainsheet tension throughout the process in order to prevent what happened last time when we dropped the rig.

Everything looked good and as it should be. Mark and Helena took off down the course to mark out the shallow water and I sailed away from the shore to allow me to come up in order to generate enough apparent to unstick. We have two means of measuring the wind which are calibrated against each other, the Tacktick unit on Sailrocket and a handheld wind meter which Helena carries. There was only around 10-13 knots but it felt like there was more a little further out.

It's worth mentioning again that the wing is 6 sqm smaller in area than the soft sail and weighs around 20kg more. At present we have only a small amount of flap deflection in order to induce a twist profile in the lower section. From our calcs. and experience, we shouldn't even get going until around 15-16 knots. The efficiency of the wing and the boat in general in these light conditions continues to impress us.

I did a fly-by of the RIB and touched just over twenty knots whilst bearing away from the shallows.

All in all we were pretty happy with the days activities as we had alot of practice handling the rig. I am now confident that after todays adjustments that we can begin venturing out in much stronger winds. Maybe on Friday.

The on board cam worked well but the audio packed it in... so enjoy the music.
We will keep at it for the next fortnight but the project is running out of money and daylight.

One run, one clean fast run is all we ask to carry us through the rest of the cold winter months.

Fingers crossed.
Cheers, Paul.

See the latest video of SailRocket here

NB: This video is formatted to play in Windows Media Player and is 7MB in size - therefore only suitable for those with broadband connections. Mac users can now view WMV files by downloading a suitable add on to Quicktime - we for example use Flip4Mac which works a treat. The only noticable difference is that while the clip will play out while downloading on a PC, on a Mac it must download first.

More pics on page 2...