Paul Larsen diary

Down to the detail on SailRocket and aggravating the gravel around France with thedailysail

Well now that all the big bits are done we are wading through all the finer points of the design that must be addressed. It feels alot more rewarding to be popping out 30ft long section of pre-preg hull and beam than fiddly little pulley brackets and centreboard cases but they are all equally necessary.

One of the more enjoyable areas to be working on is the cockpit. It is an unusual area as it has the shape of a single seat racing car cockpit and yet needs to have the systems and functions of a yacht! Instead of steering wheels, foot pedals and gear sticks there are tillers, cleats and quadrants. I made a fibreglass deck mock-up a week or so ago so I could try out various deck cut-outs. The one we settled on gives me space to throw the arms and elbows around when necessary and yet, with the canopy closed it remains very sleek.

We have opted for a tiller style arrangement to steer with. It is mounted in reverse and actually faces forward with cables linking it back to the rudders. I say rudder's as Nick Barlow from Design Craft in Shamrock Quay is well down the path of designing a very neat air rudder system that will come into play at high speed when the apparent wind has built and moved forward. A series of cleats will be mounted on a carbon pedastal between my legs and will activate such things as mainsheet coarse/fine tune, rig up-haul/down-haul and air/water rudder transfers. It will be a busy little bit of carbon.

In fact the whole cockpit will be busy and a well thought out routine will need to be followed in order to keep it all neat and tidy. Once seated, with your feet resting against the bulkhead it is actually very comfortable. It is easy to daydream and try and imagine what it will be like at very high speeds. In fact the first person to sit in the real carbon cockpit was James Boyd (editor of thedailysail) and he stayed in there until I ran out of things to talk about...and that's a bloody long time! Eventually I had to kick him out.

All the centreboard structure is in place and the sails and spars are across the Itchen River at the Doyle sail loft getting their final fit. Although it looks like a sailboard rig, the forces are much greater and special methods will need to be employed in order to tension the whole thing up.

So once Malcolm is happy that everything inside is done then we can glue the deck to the hull and there it will be. The temptation exists to rush the boat into the water at this stage but we don't want a boat that looks rushed or even worse, behaves on the water like it was rushed.





Both Helena and I are working on it full-time and the end is in sight. When she is publically launched she will be in full 'ready-to-sail' mode. We have not announced a day as yet.

On another note, recently James invited me to accompany him on a mad galavant around France chasing maxi-cats and other weird craft. The shed build shed walls were beginning to creep in on me so I leapt at the offer. We went for a sail on Bruno Peyron's new Orange and Yves Parliers radical new 60ft planing cat.

For those of you familiar with the Club Med generation of Ollier cats or even earlier, the Commodore Explorer generation, the new one is just more of the same albeit bigger. Sure, on one hand it's more refined, beautifully built and destined to eat ocean miles like nothing else... but on the other, it is big, heavy, less manouverable and serves the purpose of removing the sailors ever further from the elements. It left me thinking, how big do you have to get to stop having any fun at all and it just becomes hard work.

Now Yves boat, that was something that got me smiling from the start. It's like a mixture of Team Philips and Sailrocket and provided it all hangs together, well, it's just gotta be fun and fast (same thing really). Like Team Philips it has twin rigs and fine, unsupported bows and like Sailrocket it relies s on a stepped hull to reduce hull drag at speed and canted rigs to lower the heeling moment.

You have to admire Yves, the team and sponsors who designed and built this wonderful concept craft. Yves is not a man to shy away from innovation and I'm sure that he too has sat in his cockpit, with his hand on the tiller and imagined L'Hydroplaneur at speed. Sailing a 60ft boat short handed, flying a hull and planing at 40 knots mid-ocean.... now that... that is putting the fun back into sailing. There is a lot of new ideas on that boat and they are open about expecting difficulties. I sincerely hope that they are not too big and that the potential of the boat can be realised.

The sailboarding fraternity are currently down at the 'french trench' in the Camargue having another crack at the title and I think that very soon, weather permitting, that they will sneak it back. Like Bruno, they have got to where they are through steady evolution and persistence. They won't knock the record out of the ball-park but simply raise the hurdle another notch. Whatever the hurdle is we think that Sailrocket is capable, by nature of its concept, of achieving it. We aren't saying it will be easy or automatic, just simply that if handled well, our goals are 'doable'.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.... that way I can go chase a ride on Yves' boat!

Cheers, Paul.

Editor's note: Cheers Paul, I was actually having an afternoon snooze with my eyes open... Seriously, sitting in SailRocket's cockpit you start daydreaming about being Malcolm Campbell. You're right at the back of a 30ft long black carbon fibre hull lying down on your back with just your eyes and bald patch peeking out above the deck and this makes the hull seem more like 100ft long. Operating this baby is going to be an incredible experience.