New endeavour for Mini sailors

Team Adria now marketing the Sam Manuard-designed mini Mini, the Seascape 18

In a joint organisation between Croatia's Sailing Center Murter and YC Kornati and under sponsorship of outdoor clothes and equipment brand North Spirit, the first Seascape Murter Cup kicked off on 28 February with five boats and eight teams competing 11 flights that were held in spring-like conditions.

Racing was held in the new Seascape 18 class. This is 18ft one design racer/inshore cruiser/day sailer, concieved by well known Slovenian Mini sailors Andraž Mihelin and Kristian Hajnšek and designed by Sam Manuard best known as designer of the 2005 Mini Transat winner. The Seascape 18 is part of the new generation of sailboats that range from Seascape18, through Open 5.70, Minis, Open 60s, VO70 up to new 100ft supermaxis like Speedboat, with wide, hard chined hulls offering lots of stability for a generous sailplan. While about equal in performance as her main competition she offers some advantages:

- It was designed for recreational sailors so the boat is simple in layout with all controls simplified and cleaned to essentials. With twin rudders and stable hull form, the boat is forgiving to weekend sailors and beginners. However saying that, we can’t overlook the appeal of the boat’s power/weight ratio to a gang of experienced sailors, who can push this little baby to some nice speeds, with 18,3 knots being the current boat’s speed record.

- The development team consists from French Mini designer & guru Sam Manuard, ex-Groupama and Sergio Tacchini project manager, now turned Ronstan dealer Francois Coutant, Croatian RC44 skipper and match racer Tomislav Basic and veteran Mini Transat Team 4Ocean.

- Mast is carbon spreader-less custom-made tube in order to simplify masting/dismasting, transport & maintenance. However in order to keep the performance, the tube has carefully designed scantling of load bearing 0° unidirectional fibres, preventing lateral bending, but allowing longitudinal bend in order to power/depower the square topped mainsail. The entire rig weights 14kg, allowing one person to rig or de-rig the boat quickly and painlessly.

- Sails aside for gunning for a big, self depowering square top mainsail, they are laminated They fly a relatively big asymmetric at 32sqm from a retractable 1.5m long bowsprit. The spinnaker is retrieved into the snuffer bag simply attached to the deck, a nice F18/49er-like feature enjoyed by everybody who tried it.

- The keel weighs 125kg, which together with a powerful hull offers enough stability that even a weekend sailor can feel comfortable, while it is still completely retractable. This simple makes the boat defacto beachable and dead easy to lounch/recover. With a sail ready boat weighting 470kg, dry sailing was actually practiced quite a lot on the 3 prototypes we built for the testing.

The main quality of the Seascape 18, beside its performance and price, is its ability to reward growing sailing ability and knowledge of the sailor. The manufacturer's goal is to run it as strict one design class with a base in central Europe and than go from there. With 22 boats sold in first few months, the future for the Seascape is bright.

Technical specs:
Length (LOA): 5.50m.
Beam: 2.36m.
Draft: 0.15-1.5m.
Displacement: 470kg.
Keel weight: 125kg.
Mast (carbon fibre): 7.4m.
Deckgear: Ronstan.
Mainsail (vector glass): 14.5sqm.
Jib: 8.5m2.
Gennaker: 32m2.
Hull/deck material: GRP.
Insubmersibility volume: 1m3.

Racing:

Day one

Light winds and temperatures up to 16 degrees marked first day of racing. The organiser set a short windward/leeward course in front of marina Hramina, which proved to be a good challenge for 5 boats competing.

First flight of day one was won by team helmed by Ratko Štibriè on AUT 003, but until the end of the day Šime Stipanièev on SLO 007 and Tonko Rameša on CRO 004 joined him at the top of the rankings.

Some facts for day one:
wind speed: 4 - 8 knots
typical flight distance: 1,5M
typical flight time: 18min
average straight speed
upwind 4,4 knots
average tacking angle: 88deg,
average straight speed downwind: 5,8kt,
average jibing angle: 78deg,
top speed of the day: 7,2kt.


Day two
Warm, moderate southerly wind assured more exciting sailing on day two. We were happy to see, that mixed crews had no problems claiming podium places throughout the day and that in given conditions Seascape had no problems covering for crew’s mistakes in boat handling.

More wind brought more fun, more stress and more exciting sailing. 4 flights saw 3 different winners and very close racing.

Figures for day two:
wind speed: 12 - 16kt,
typical flight distance: 2,2M,
typical flight time: 22min,
average straight speed
upwind 5,2kt,
average tacking angle: 91deg,
average straight speed downwind: 7,9kt,
average jibing angle: 68deg,
top speed of the day: 10,6kt.
All data again from 4 boats equipped with Velocitek GPS computers (only 2 tracks are shown on map for better visibility).

More photos on the following pages...