The nut and bolts of Ran 2 - part 2

We continue our guided tour to the latest IRC Mini Maxi

This article on Ran 2 follows on from part 1 published last week:

Coming down the companionway you are struck by the excellent finish. For example all the bulkheads have round caps to prevent chafing. However your eye immediately goes to the four enormous heads of the keel bolts. “The keel head goes up into the boat with no big flange plate underneath and then you have four M75 bolts – they are tooled steel fasteners,” explains Boat Captain Anthony Haines. “They are a high grade tool steel - harder grade than the fin itself.” About 300mm long, the bolts go down into the fin by around 220mm. Getting them on was apparently a major operation, but made easier as they had dry fitted and aligned the fin when they turned the boat during construction. Between the bolts a structural tie rod, a carbon tube, extends down from the deck.

The mast foot features three rams – for the mast butt, mounted on the aft side (rather than the forward side as it is on the STPs), vang on the forward side of the mast (the sheet passing through the spar) and the Cunningham. As on the STP65s, the turning blocks by the mast at deck level, are attached to the mast rather than the deck. This allows structure to be removed from the deck, but Haines cites another advantage: “you can adjust the jack pressure and you don’t have to worry about the height of your halyards.”

To starboard of the mast is the large galley area with twin sinks and a robust stainless steel cooker that Haines admits is not the lightest option. “It had to be quite functional in the belief that if you have 20 people on an offshore race you have to be able to cook safely and effectively and also with some level of efficiency.”

Forward of the galley on the starboard side is the large head compartment.

The navigation area is not located beneath the cockpit, but instead to port of the mast, although navigator Steve Hayles’ will typically sit on the saloon bench seat to weather, where he has a neat fold-out PC screen on either side of the boat. In terms of electronics, Ran 2 is fully B&G, but Hayles has fully embraced the Pi range from Cosworth Electronics for data logging. More on this later in the week. “Having Steve and Lou [Varney] on the boat …we are very reliant upon out numbers, we are very much a team that sail around the numbers as well as feel and all the old fashioned methods,” says Haines.

With the long sleeve for the drop-line system and also tail bags for the sheets, there is a lot of canvas-work down below and this was made by Gerry Faram of Medina Sailcare in Cowes. As on the STP65s, sheet tails disappear through plastic Laser-style port holes in the cockpit side and into 1m long bags with a drain hole at the bottom.

Unlike the STP65s, Ran 2 had her pipecots fitted when we saw her. These have become quite refined and on Ran 2 they were manufactured by West Engineering with a carbon/alloy frame and are attached to the hull via windsurfer universal joints.

Aft of the companionway is the box for the Yanmar 110hp diesel engine and lifting leg. The drive incorporates a titanium Armatech coupling and at present she uses a five bladed carbon propeller, which sounds cool, but from the tone of his voice Haines indicates this may not be on for long. The leg lifts and drops via a simple 8:1 purchase, but cannot be done while the boat is underway.

Another innovation for this type of boat is that Ran 2 uses a fuel cell. “My experience so far has been good,” says Haines. “We want to get it more integrated in our battery set-up. At the moment we only have two batteries plus one for the engine start, so we are quite reliant on it, although we don’t have a lot of electrical functions.” According to Hayles, the fuel cell has allowed them to keep some batteries out of the boat.

The boat captain has clearly had a major hand in the mechanical set-up – thus the filters on the engine are instantly accessible, as is the EPIRB. For the fuel tank that sits in the compartment aft of the drive leg, there is no filler tube – filling is direct to the tank. “If there are problems with dirt in the tank, you can pump it out and lift it out. We’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible,” says Haines.

Attached to the underside of the cockpit and above the fuel tank is the MBT and the drive shafts for the winch pedestals and aft of this the hydraulic heart, the manifold and a carbon fibre hydraulic oil reservoir (below) made by Ian Lovering.



In the compartment further aft is the huge carbon fibre rudder stock and quadrant where JP3 bearings have been used. While there is a sprocket chain drive within the Green Marine-built steering wheel pedestals on deck, this attaches to wire to go around the quadrant, via standard Harken Black Magic blocks. On deck the twin carbon fibre wheels themselves are to owner Niklas Zennstrom’s own design.

Up top

Up on deck, the end of the bowsprit is held down by a Future Fibres bobstay. Rather than lashing this, instead the bobstay is a fixed length, held in place with pins. This makes fitting quite exciting as the bowsprit has to be pre-bent. “The only problem is that you end up with a slightly droopy bowsprit when the boat is on the hard, but it is a better solution than having to worry constantly about bobstay tension especially when you are running with sails with potentially 4-5 tonnes of tack load like the A0,” says Haines, who adds they did the same on Bounder. In fact it gives it a slight 18ft skiff look, which we feel is no bad thing.

The headstay is C6 with a headstay strop made by Jonathan Taylor and Mark Thomas’ company TT Rigging. At present they have a Tuff Luff fitted, although they are also testing a lighter weight solution from New Zealand. Both forestay and inner forestay sit in a well.

The sail inventory is all North. Design work started off with North Spain’s Juan Messanger, but the sail inventory is now run between Tim Powell and Jeremy Robinson, while Andy Hemings and Richard Bouzaid have also been involved with the development of the downwind sails. They all sail on board: Hemings, downwind trimmer as he was with Emirates Team NZ and Bouzaid trimming upwind, while Robinson is strategist. The main and some of the downwind inventory were tested at the University of Auckland’s twisted flow wind tunnel.

Around the perimeter of the foredeck, going back to the mast are carbon fibre handrails, while the stanchions are tapered and of carbon fibre and glass construction. They don’t have the rollers on the lifelines around the bow that we saw on the STP65s. The foredeck hatch has a pneumatic seal around it to make it watertight and this is operated from buttons by the mast and down below.

Another innovation is Ran 2’s jib cars. With athwartships tracks, lateral movement is carried out by a single ram, mounted below deck, for each track. This ram is double ended, with the lines from the port and starboard ends of the car attaching to each end of the ram. However the up and down controls, rather than leading forward to rams below deck - as is the case on the STPs - are mounted on the jib cars themselves.

The rig is by Southern Spars and has three sets of adjustable spreaders stayed by continuous EC6 carbon rigging. All halyards, including the main, are on Southern locks. The lock for the main is on a carriage, the same set-up as the Ericssons. For inshore they have a bolt rope for the main but for offshore races Haines says they will use batten cars for ease of reefing and sail handling ability.

The vang strut is used solely for when they come in to or leave the dock to support the boom and mainsail. Otherwise the vang strut is fitted with TP52 jockey pole-style connectors, enabling it to be removed easily for racing.

In the cockpit, the starboard driven pit winch is a Lewmar 99, while the manual port one is a 68. Primaries are 105s and manual 60s are used for the traveller and more 99s for the driven runner winches. The winches on the port side counter rotate, while the 60s and primaries have a white ceramic coating that we first saw on a couple of the TP52s last season.

So ceramic coating - does it work? We ask Haines: “Yes, massively - almost to the point where it is chewing the rope. Now they are starting to bed in. We put them on the traveller and we can come out of a tack at full load with two turns on the winch and put it on the tailer and wind it up. That’s on the 2:1 on the traveller as well. But typically you are running at four turns with your full jib load.”

A James Stagg innovation is the articulating mainsheet track, which he also fitted to Charles Dunstone’s TP52 Rio. The idea is to try and keep the main sheet in alignment, but building it is no mean feat as the track is the full width of an already wide cockpit. The long pin around which the track pivots is inserted via a hole in the port side of the hull...

In the spirit of keeping the deck layout clean and as minimalistic as possible, the spinnaker sheets run underdeck from the back of the boat. “They go to a single sheeve at the back. It is an oversized sheeve so we can run twin lines through one sheeve,” explains Haines. “Then all we do is we pull the lazy sheet aft of the working one and clip it behind the pushpit.” This avoids crew packed at the back end of the bus, sitting on the sheet. A similar arrangement is used on the Ericssons.

Having come from Bounder, when they had problems getting to the liferafts when she lost her keel and flipped, Haines has had a major hand in the set-up of Ran 2’s liferafts, mounted at the back of the cockpit, just inboard from the transom. The rafts are held in place with a single strap and attach to lugs on the transom by Talaska T5s. “You don’t have to get through the guard wires, you just pull the cord, two straps come off and the rafts are deployed,” he says.

Ran 2 will typically sail with 20-22 crew, but at 72ft long there is no shortage of space on the rail.

To sum up - it is fantastic to see the brain power of so many talented people within the industry in the UK having melded their ideas in the creation of Ran 2. The downside of this is that she is an immensely technical and innovative boat and it will require all their skills to ensure her wheels stay on. Appropriately in a busy schedule this summer she is returning to the UK to compete in Cowes Week and also in the Rolex Fastnet Race before returning to the Med for the Maxi Worlds.

More photos on the following pages...