Film from the wire

We bring you footage of the VX40, Basilica, at Weymouth Speed Week

“We’re going for the run up, out on the wire quickly,” Alistair Richardson shouts from his position on the trampoline. I would like to say I dove out onto the trapeze with grace and skill, showing everyone how quick we 49er sailors are. In fact I took a place in the queue of people waiting, trapeze in hand, to ease themselves gingerly out over the water, already roaring past at close to 20 knots. Finally we are set up and out on the wire ready to make our run between two marks for yet another time today.

I should probably explain this gushing introduction: It was written about 30 minutes after stepping off Basilica, the VX40 catamaran, down in Weymouth last week for Weymouth Speed Week. Often we at TheDailySail.com receive invitations to go and do fun or interesting things and there can be a bit of a scrap about who gets to go. So when we received a request from the Basilica team to come sailing with them during this event there were the usual arguments about who got to go. However, upon further inspection it became clear the team were attaching four trapezes to the boat and wanted to break to 36 knot Weymouth Harbour speed record; this was suddenly a very different story. Quickly, I discovered all eyes trained on me! As youngest with most trapeze experience and, presumably, most expendable it was decided I would go and hang of the side of this machine for two days.

It was then, with a certain amount of trepidation that I arrived at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy. The weather forecast was for sunshine and not too much wind so I was excited more than nervous when, upon arrival and against all odds, the forecast turned out to be correct.



After a brief while in the morning playing what seems to be VX40 sailors’ favourite game, namely wakeboarding off the back of the boat, we prepared for the speed run proper on the 500m course. Trapezing from the side of the VX40 is an interesting experience to say the least. Principally because there is no grip on the side of the hulls - as they were not designed to trapeze off - you are actually standing on a highly polished surface. Secondly it is all very easy as the boat lifts a hull and begins to accelerate, but as the boat is two sail reaching it is very difficult to keep the windward hull out of the water all the time (as this requires a significant amount of main sheet and traveller adjustment which is not particularly easy on a fully loaded up 40ft cat.) When the windward hull touches the water the additional drag slows the boat dramatically enough to send those on the trapeze sliding forward down the slippery windward hull. Helpfully there was a solution for this, though it was not, perhaps, the most elegant. The aft-most man but one had a strop put on his trapeze line leading to the very back of the hull, stopping him from going forward. The man behind him would lean on him, the man immediately in front of him would hang onto his trapeze line to prevents any forward motion and the man at the front would hold onto him, making a row of people all relying on a 3mm rope to stop them shooting round the forestay. Needless to say there were moments when this was a very nerve-wracking experience.

The first few runs of the day took place in ten to 15 knots of breeze, not nearly enough to be breaking any speed records but a good breeze for working out what the fastest combinations were for later in the day when the wind got up a little more.

The trouble with speed sailing is it takes a fair amount of time to work out what the optimum number of people on the boat is, too many and there is too much weight on the boat causing drag, too few and there is not enough leverage to keep the boat suitably powered up. After several runs it became clear the best combination in these conditions would be three men on the trapezes and the normal four men on the boat. Also the large sails on the boat create a significant amount of drag and it was deemed that as the wind increased a reef in the main would actually make the boat faster down the track.



It is in this order – reefed with three on the wire - the partially described run above took place. After waiting for the decidedly ungainly Bill Masterman – 1995 505 World Champion – to ease himself over the side of the boat it was my turn to go. The first time I stepped on board a VX40 was during some of the racing at the Portsmouth stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race. One of the first things I said then was quite how little it feels like a 40ft boat. It was the same this time and trapezing off the side of the boat holding onto Bill’s trapeze wire – he was the one with the strop – as someone called out 20, then 22, then 23 knots - I was once again struck by how silent the boat was despite the speed and just how similar it feels to any other beach cat in the world.

As the final man got out on the wire Richardson began to bear off a little and we could feel the speed increase further still, although now it was coming in definite spikes as both Richardson on the helm and Peter Greenhalgh on the main struggled to keep the boat perfectly smooth in the gusty conditions. Occasionally the windward hull just dropped and skimmed the top of the water causing us all to be thrown forward briefly before the strop took hold steadying us again. Shockingly quickly the run was over and I held on as we quickly bore away to avoid the shallow water fast approaching ahead. Then it was in off the wire and back up to the other end of the course to try another configuration and another run.

In reality there was almost no chance of us breaking any records as there was not enough wind all day but when we got back to the shore we were told we had managed just over 20 knots in about nine knots of wind and recorded an average of 20.24 over the 500m course on our best run. We were pretty pleased with this and record or not I am now probably only a handful of people who can say they have trapezed from the side of a 40ft cat at over 20 knots.

Unfortunately the next day dawned with a lot of breeze and, though we were keen enough to get into our wet gear and pull harnesses on, a quick check of the conditions in the Basillica RIB showed the weather to be very much borderline, with gusts of up to 30 knots. The wind continued to increase through the day and it was pretty obvious by 1pm we were not going to get out on the water. 20.24 knots was as fast as I went during my time in Weymouth, a decent speed but a significant 16 knots off any record.



Click here to see a video taken from the trapeze of Basilica during two runs down the 500m course. This is a 7.5Mb wmv file and it contains some mild swearing.