Runs 30 and 31 completed... The cup is half full!!!
Hi all,
Quite a good day in the 'cup is half full' frame of mind!
Good to be out sailing with all the PI RESEARCH and TACKTICK instruments back online thanks to their UK support teams. This means that Malcolm can also go 'sailing' once the data is collected. I can't stress how vital all this collected data is to the project. The data itself is pretty useless unless it is well interpreted and that is done by Malcolm with the aid of my 'seat of the pants' input and video referencing.
We got geared up as the wind built knowing that the tide would be leaving us within a couple of hours. One of our local team was dragging his heals in getting ready despite living on the premises. We sat their in our wetsuits waiting until Hiskia eventually took the other guys gear over to him. I'm pretty impatient in these situations so we took Sailrocket down to the water. When the other guy was still late I had had enough. We had to leave... so we did. I don't know why he was behaving like that... it was as if he was trying to teach us something for some reason. He did... we learnt how to raise the rig and sail the boat without him and managed to get two runs in with a team of only four! Of course it's not ideal, but it can be done safely and will be done again if necessary!
So the wind was gusting to 19 knots for Run 30 and I was keen to get steering with the skeg-flap. The miraculous Mr 'M' was now on 'launch control' and responsible for getting Sailrocket off to a good start. Sailrocket picked up quickly once pointed up towards the course and I sheeted in relatively quickly but noted that I was requiring more and more rudder to bring the boat in line with the beach. I sheeted in hard but the boat was 'out of mode' and still accelerating.
I sheeted in hard to stall the wing and managed to turn away from the beach. The speed quickly dropped off. By this time I was down near the timing hut with two thirds of the course still remaining. I came up and had another go, the same thing happened and once again I oversheeted to stall the wing and slow the boat. Not a good run... and a little annoying to be back in the old 'mode'. I thought about it and put it down to trying too hard to accelerate quickly. In the critical stage of the run-up where Sailrocket is initially accelerating from the mid teens to the mid/high twenties, the balance of the boat is changing dramatically as the apparent wind angle changes rapidly. It is also the stage where I go from sailing back in towards the beach to create apparent to bearing away to line up with the beach and hence the speed course. Alot is going on. I was determined this time to shorten the time and hence the distance involved in this manouver. I think that this lead to me oversheeting at the wrong time instead of leaving the wing a little more eased whilst I bear away and letting the boat accelerate through this phase. Once the apparent is forward and the flow is attached to both the wing and the foils... Sailrocket is locked in. It seems that once this state is achieved, it is pretty hard to come out of it.
We used our new four man method of juggling all the control lines, dropped the rig and went back up the course for another run. Another good launch. I tried the easier sheeting method and Sailrocket quickly dropped into mode. There was less wind in this run with the wind only peaking at 15 knots before the run. We managed a 34.3 knot peak, good control and overall a solid run in tight to the shore.
During the run I noticed that the front of the boat lifted a little and stepped sideways. Later on when fitting the skid shoe to the bottom of the skeg for towing across the shallow lagoon I noticed that the main foil was loose. It had slipped about 10-15 degrees more vertical during the run. This meant that the wing and the foil were no longer in allignment and that the up force of the wing wasn't matched by the down force of the foil... hence at top speed the wing was lifting the main hull out of the water. I'm surprised that even at speeds in the mid 30's that the foil didn't rip out of the side of the boat. The strength designed/built into this area is substantial so apart from a bent M8 bolt, very little damage was done. The silicon seal around the bottom had ruptured which meant the foil case was full of water.
All the new electronics worked well... but for the second run the new solid state video recording equipment dropped out. I'll reserve judgement on it... but for the moment I am not overly happy with it as there is very little warning of battery state or lack of memory... unlike a camera. The footage once recieved is pretty good and it is alot lighter than carrying a video camera.
We slowly nursed (manually carried) Sailrocket across a very shallow lagoon and got her out of the water for a good inspection. The main foil and planing surface were removed and cleaned ready for refitting tomorrow. The problem area was identified and will be modified for the next run. It was something I was aware of but had sort of put aside as it hadn't given us any problems or indication in over 75 runs in the last four years. No excuse... that's just how it happened and I sort of kick myself for it now. Luckily it reared its head during a mild run... It could have been much worse. We will be back in action tomorrow.
So I became more familiar with an aspect of the boats handling and we gathered alot of data to associate with this familiarity. We sailed safely and efficiently with one less person although the onshore filming did suffer a bit. The fact that we found a fault in a critical area without serious consequence should also be seen as a blessing.
I look forward to tomorrow as the tides are getting better each day now... for a while anyway.
Cheers, Paul.
Quite a good day in the 'cup is half full' frame of mind!
Good to be out sailing with all the PI RESEARCH and TACKTICK instruments back online thanks to their UK support teams. This means that Malcolm can also go 'sailing' once the data is collected. I can't stress how vital all this collected data is to the project. The data itself is pretty useless unless it is well interpreted and that is done by Malcolm with the aid of my 'seat of the pants' input and video referencing.
We got geared up as the wind built knowing that the tide would be leaving us within a couple of hours. One of our local team was dragging his heals in getting ready despite living on the premises. We sat their in our wetsuits waiting until Hiskia eventually took the other guys gear over to him. I'm pretty impatient in these situations so we took Sailrocket down to the water. When the other guy was still late I had had enough. We had to leave... so we did. I don't know why he was behaving like that... it was as if he was trying to teach us something for some reason. He did... we learnt how to raise the rig and sail the boat without him and managed to get two runs in with a team of only four! Of course it's not ideal, but it can be done safely and will be done again if necessary!
So the wind was gusting to 19 knots for Run 30 and I was keen to get steering with the skeg-flap. The miraculous Mr 'M' was now on 'launch control' and responsible for getting Sailrocket off to a good start. Sailrocket picked up quickly once pointed up towards the course and I sheeted in relatively quickly but noted that I was requiring more and more rudder to bring the boat in line with the beach. I sheeted in hard but the boat was 'out of mode' and still accelerating.
I sheeted in hard to stall the wing and managed to turn away from the beach. The speed quickly dropped off. By this time I was down near the timing hut with two thirds of the course still remaining. I came up and had another go, the same thing happened and once again I oversheeted to stall the wing and slow the boat. Not a good run... and a little annoying to be back in the old 'mode'. I thought about it and put it down to trying too hard to accelerate quickly. In the critical stage of the run-up where Sailrocket is initially accelerating from the mid teens to the mid/high twenties, the balance of the boat is changing dramatically as the apparent wind angle changes rapidly. It is also the stage where I go from sailing back in towards the beach to create apparent to bearing away to line up with the beach and hence the speed course. Alot is going on. I was determined this time to shorten the time and hence the distance involved in this manouver. I think that this lead to me oversheeting at the wrong time instead of leaving the wing a little more eased whilst I bear away and letting the boat accelerate through this phase. Once the apparent is forward and the flow is attached to both the wing and the foils... Sailrocket is locked in. It seems that once this state is achieved, it is pretty hard to come out of it.
We used our new four man method of juggling all the control lines, dropped the rig and went back up the course for another run. Another good launch. I tried the easier sheeting method and Sailrocket quickly dropped into mode. There was less wind in this run with the wind only peaking at 15 knots before the run. We managed a 34.3 knot peak, good control and overall a solid run in tight to the shore.
During the run I noticed that the front of the boat lifted a little and stepped sideways. Later on when fitting the skid shoe to the bottom of the skeg for towing across the shallow lagoon I noticed that the main foil was loose. It had slipped about 10-15 degrees more vertical during the run. This meant that the wing and the foil were no longer in allignment and that the up force of the wing wasn't matched by the down force of the foil... hence at top speed the wing was lifting the main hull out of the water. I'm surprised that even at speeds in the mid 30's that the foil didn't rip out of the side of the boat. The strength designed/built into this area is substantial so apart from a bent M8 bolt, very little damage was done. The silicon seal around the bottom had ruptured which meant the foil case was full of water.
All the new electronics worked well... but for the second run the new solid state video recording equipment dropped out. I'll reserve judgement on it... but for the moment I am not overly happy with it as there is very little warning of battery state or lack of memory... unlike a camera. The footage once recieved is pretty good and it is alot lighter than carrying a video camera.
We slowly nursed (manually carried) Sailrocket across a very shallow lagoon and got her out of the water for a good inspection. The main foil and planing surface were removed and cleaned ready for refitting tomorrow. The problem area was identified and will be modified for the next run. It was something I was aware of but had sort of put aside as it hadn't given us any problems or indication in over 75 runs in the last four years. No excuse... that's just how it happened and I sort of kick myself for it now. Luckily it reared its head during a mild run... It could have been much worse. We will be back in action tomorrow.
So I became more familiar with an aspect of the boats handling and we gathered alot of data to associate with this familiarity. We sailed safely and efficiently with one less person although the onshore filming did suffer a bit. The fact that we found a fault in a critical area without serious consequence should also be seen as a blessing.
I look forward to tomorrow as the tides are getting better each day now... for a while anyway.
Cheers, Paul.
posted by Paul at 9:34 pm
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