The aircraft carrier

We take a look at Eamon Conneely's new Patches TP 52

Having been involved with the TP 52 circuit for two seasons already, so for 2007 owner Galway's finest Eamon Conneely, skipper Ian Walker and the Patches team have a new boat for this season.

Like the last boat, the new Patches is another design from Reichel-Pugh but this one has been constructed at McConaghy's new facility in China where several notable race boats from Geoff Ross' new Yendys to China Team's America's Cup cupper have already been built.

Most striking about the new Patches is her substantial beam aft, although skipper Ian Walker says that this ABN AMRO/aircraft carrier style width is slightly an illusion. "She is at deck, I don’t think she is at waterline," he says. At the time of this conversation we were scratching our beards on the dockside comparing the new boat with that of neighbouring Matador, the new Judel Vrolijk TP 52 of Argentinian owner Alberto Roemmers.





"Their waterline comes up almost like a false chine. Also it is slightly deceiving visually because their boat ends 18in before the end, whereas ours doesn’t," continued Walker. "Our last boat went all the way back. I think it is really important to get the weight all the way aft. As soon as we are upwind in more than 12 knots or reaching we are all the way back there."

While it is not so evident due to the angle from which the photos above have been taken, on Matador there is an angle between the top of the transom and deck level, the idea being to remove weight from this extremity of the boat. On the new Patches the deck ends abruptly at the transom giving the boat a side profile of a larger boat that has been chopped off at its blunt end.

Below the water Walker says the fin is of a similar section and size to what they had on Patches last year, but the bulb is slightly shorter and fatter. This is probably due to the moding of the boat. Compared to the old boat, Patches 2 is more orientated towards upwind and light airs, specifically around 8-12 knots "although you wouldn’t believe it looking at the transom," Walker adds.

Aloft the mast is the first three spreader version Hall Spars have produced using their latest TP 52 section. This is flying slightly against the trend towards two spreader rigs seen on the TP52s as they are optimised more for the lighter end of the wind range (while there are coastal races still, there are no overnight offshores any more in the Breitling MedCup circuit). "We are finding huge differences in the set-up. Whether that is good or bad, we’ll find out," says Walker of the new rig set-up.

In the cockpit there have been a number of modifications compared to the old boat. Most noticable is the move, inspired last year by Peter de Ridder's Mean Machine (and taken up by a majority of the new launches this year) of going from twin wheels to tiller steering. Aside from many of the helmsmen prefering tiller to wheels, the tiller represents a weight saving. Walker also points out that there is a windage benefit too from not having the wheels nor a helmsman standing up.

On the new Patches the pit winch (known delightfully as the 'bitch winch') is also now powered by the pumps and the mainsheet is split between two winches rather than having a central dedicated mainsheet winch. The winch layout has also changed around with the runner winches now at the back of the coaming. "We had the backstay winches forwards so that the mainsheet trimmer had them," Walker says of the old set-up. Also in the cockpit the liferaft now has its own locker which is lower and closer to the middle of the boat, also having the effect of stiffening the cockpit sole.

One of the neatest developments in the cockpit is the use of Lou Varney's traveller system, known as the Harken Pro-trim. This system we have written about before but has a continuous control line entering both sides of the the cockpit in front of the main sheet trimmer's position. Below deck these lines connect to a pulley that drives a shaft. This shaft runs aft to just below the main sheet track. The shaft ends in a gear box and then another pulley directly operates the traveller on another continuous line system. Varney says the gearing at the end of the shaft is a true 14:1. The advantage of the system is that it requires no cascades of blocks and makes the plumbing for the control lines much simpler even though you end up with a continuous line going across the middle of the cockpit. Russell Coutts' new Artemis TP 52 is also having this system - so it must be good...

Down below Walker says the layout is similar to the old Patches. Our initial impression is just how open the boat is forward - from the companionway you can see the headstay hydraulic ram right up forward on the inside of the bow (on the old Patches it was fixed to a bulkhead further aft) - and how unopen the boat is aft. It is a full on hands and knees scramble to get aft. There are of course the normal laughable IMS 'cruising' features such as a head (forward and to starboard of the main bulkhead), a galley (aft of the mainbulk on the starboard side) and the chart table (the engine cover).

Generally we were thoroughly impressed with standard of the 'bare carbon' finish down below. The height of luxury in this respect is the nice carbon fibre engine exhaust pipe.

What's it like to sail? Fun. We went out yesterday in around 15 knots as the team were sail testing and carrying out a couple of practise races on their own. It was a little too early in the boat's work up to be hitting top speeds - this was only her fifth time out, but the jerky movement of the boat indicated she was light and her hitting speeds up into the mid-20s is easy to imagine.

Owner Eamon Conneely was beaming from ear to ear in the champagne sailing conditions, loving every minute of it and was on the tiller at every opportunity when regular racing helms Tim Powell (who has moved to Patches from Cristabella) was taking a break.

The Patches teams are down in Valencia training this week prior to the first event in the 2007 Breitling MedCup starting on Alicante on 12 June. We'll be there...

More photos on the following pages...