Bucket List update.

After half a dozen sails with a 40% mainsail, it got too cold to play so BL sat on it’s anchor for a couple of months while I decided what to do next. The issues were:

i) Although there was some interest in chartering racing multis, there was none in either paying for 4 of them or running the business.
ii) The quality of the build is poor as a result of limited build time during my trips to Adelaide. In particular the leeward hull repair of a screw up with the mould dimensions and one of the beams which has the vacbag and resin absorber stuck inside it.
iii) A 12m x 8m boat drawing 100mm without (and with) a motor is a handful to maneuver solo in a breeze.
iv) Anchoring in a busy waterway is fraught. Every time the breeze was up, it was surrounded by kite boarders, most of whom were beginners. A powerboat cut the anchor warp one night, the boat was stopped by a couple of fishermen at 1 am just before it reached the open sea, next stop Chile. A fortnight later, it was impounded by the water police for being anchored in the same spot for over a week. The canal berth I had arranged for bad weather fell through.
v) I am not going to get time to sail it to regattas.

At the same time, we started brainstorming a design for the Volvo Ocean Race inshore foiler. This produced 3 new ideas. Foils, an out of hull rig and a triscarph lee hull. Followed by the realisation that an automatically self righting proa was feasible.

The upshot of all this is that BL is being turned into a trailerable foiler so we can check these ideas out.

The beams will be reduced to 6m (ease of trailering, shorter load on the trailer, able to fit in my canal berth, chop off the dodgy bit). Righting moment is reduced, but not by much as the rig will be 2m to ww of the leeward hull, supported by stays to the ends of the beams, the same as the Volvo proa. It will not have the diamonds or the extended boom as the current mast does not require them. The rig is easier to raise and lower and allows the easiest means of altering the rake/sail balance. This also is not required with the current rig, but would be if the sail area was maximised.

The lee hull will be chopped up into 2 x 3.5m hulls, joined by a 6m x 150mm dia carbon tube. The ww hull chopped down to half the height and a cockpit added. The beam clearance is reduced, but once foiling, will be higher than before.

The rudders and foils will be mounted on the hull sides so they can kick up.

The end result will be a weight saving of about 40% (500 kgs to 300 kgs), with another 50 to come when the beams and rig are optimized, less than half the windage and no component longer than 6m or heavier than 40 kgs. The loa (12m) stays the same, the sail area on the 3 piece, 16m (1.5m of which is “bury”) telescoping mast drops to about 45sq m.

Once we know all this works, a range of boats will be available for home or pro builders.

As always, I expect to be sailing by Xmas. Photos will be on the blog and facebook. The “Volvo Proa” presentation is here http://harryproa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/…/volvoproa.pdf