Pelt's progress

Racing at Cowes will be the new Full Pelt. We speak to Jo Richards and Stephen Fein about their new 36ft flier

One of the boats to look out for at Skandia Cowes Week next week will be Stephen Fein's new 36ft Full Pelt X, conceived and created from back of fag packet via CAD work (by Christian Stimson) to finished product in the water sailing by Fein's long term skipper/designer Jo Richards.

To read more about Jo Richards' design ideas for the boat see our interview with Jo from November.

Now she is launched the first impression of the new Full Pelt X is of a pumped-up 49er, due to her very narrow hull and wings. In fact proportionally her wings aren't nearly as extreme as those of a 49er.

"The boat is actually narrower than the last boat was which was water ballasted," says Richards. "The waterline is narrower, so we are able to keep the crew weight out to a reasonable point. And obviously the wings are removable so that we fit into the European trailing limits - it’s easier than tipping the boat on its side."

As is becoming the trend with the modern high performance race boats that aren't designed to fit into a rating rule, Full Pelt X has a canting keel. The angle of movement of this is a whopping +/- 55deg, five degrees more than the maxZ86s she was racing against at Cork Week recently.

The canting mechanism employs one pump and two rams, but to date Richards says they have been experiencing some teething problems with the system. This set-back caused them to miss the Bol d'Or on Lake Geneva in July and at Cork Week they missed a day of racing due to issues with the 'borrowed' pump they were using, that operated only at 60% of their usual pump and was suffering from air in the system. For Cowes Week Richards hopes that back on his original pumps, the problems will be resolved.

For those who were expecting the new Full Pelt to be planing upwind straight out of the box, a little more patience is required, says Richards.

"It’s slightly chaotic at the moment, but it is only to be expected. We’re learning how to sail it, getting used to the systems and getting used to what we can get away with and what we can’t get away with. Just silly things like we appear to be so much quicker downwind than we were in the last boat that we can get away with using much smaller and flatter spinnakers, that will make life easier. Broadly speaking it is much as we expected."

He continues: "The reality is that it is going to be at least a two year project and we have a rig in that is the right size for lake racing so it is giving you more induced drag when it is going upwind when you are not fully powered up. Maybe we will end up with a smaller rig for racing in Britain." The last 36 footer he continued to develop over the course of nine years.

Despite being a giant swing-keel 49er, Richards says that the sailing characteristics of the boat are not that unusual. "From a sailing point of view you really wouldn’t notice [the swing keel]. It is like sailing a dinghy with somebody on the trapeze. At the point where the crew would bend their knees a little bit on the trapeze someone moves off the edge. You don’t notice it has a swing keel in there until it all goes wrong when you notice it big time."

During Cork Week one of the crew trod on the lever that operates the keel mid-gybe dropping it down to leeward on the new tack causing the boat to lay over on her side.

Compared to the arrangement on Minis or Open 60s, the keel mechanism has had to be made so that the keel can be lifted up into the boat in order for it to be trailed. With the keel fully swung a daggerboard fitted aft of the mast in the cockpit is used to prevent leeway and because this pulls up beneath the boom Full Pelt X is fitted with a Gnav rather than a conventional van.

The boat appears to have a very low freeboard but Richards says that it is not abnormally wet for a high performance boat. "The bow hasn’t been going under downwind and going upwind it is a lot less slammy than the old boat was."

One of the almost amusing issues with the boat is her rating. At Cork she came in under IRC at 1.620. This compares with 1.649 for the maxZ86s, but 1.081 or 1.071 for an equivalent sized BH36 or a Sydney 36.

"We knew we would go up a little bit [compared to the previous Full Pelt], but we didn’t imagine it would be quite as much as it was," says Richards. "But it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the reason we do it. It is not a reflection on the performance of the boat, it’s a reflection of what the rule can and can’t deal with. It is ridiculous to think that a state of the art 36ft swing keel keelboat is going to beat an 86ft state of the art swing keel boat. That’s just the reality of the thing."

Having had so many of Jo Richards' extreme one-offs from a Formula 40 trimaran to a Formula 28 catamaran and the last 36ft monohull, Full Pelt's owner Stephen Fein is used to the process of having to iron out the wrinkles with new boats. Generally he seems happy: "It’s splendid. We’re very pleased with it. It’s very fast. It’s all Jo’s work. He has a great mind and is a great sailor."

While they had fun chasing the maxis around Cork in a boat less than half their size, Fein is looking forward to trying Full Pelt X out in the environment she was built for - the Swiss and Italian lakes. After Skandia Cowes Week Full Pelt X heads for Lake Garda ready for the Centomiglia on 4-5 September. "On the lakes in smooth water we’ll look very good," says Fein.

In the meantime if it blows at Skandia Cowes Week watch out for this particular ball of spray...

More detail shots of the new Full Pelt X on the following pages...