What makes this blog run?

What makes this erudite sailing blog possible? How does Instagram save all those millions and millions of selfie photos? Where is the cloud? (Many of us don't trust it wherever it is.) How can Gmail save all my emails, even the ones I didn't mean to send? Why does Facebook still have THAT PHOTO of a certain college party after all these years

This video does the best of any to explain the technology of acres and acres of data farms that makes the cloud possible and has taken us beyond the single computer workstation (and shlepping a floppy disk hither and yon) into the hyper connected world. (It must be noted that this video is also a Google advertisement.)

C-Class LittleCup Wrapup

We looked at Groupama's foil control setup; here is the wrap up video of the actual final match racing for the C-Class LittleCup.

Put the board down! No! Sideways! No! Way Forward!

On my Classic Moth, I put the daggerboard down when going upwind, pull it up offwind. I might pull it up slightly going upwind in a breeze, but that's not very precise, just a yank before I go upwind. Sometimes in my dotage, I've completely blanked and forgotten to pull the board up until I'm half-way down the leeward leg.

Contrast that with the professional sailors, technologists, and builders on Team Groupama C-class catamaran (who just won the 2015 Little Cup, the Cup formerly known as the Little America's Cup). Groupama have so finely honed their foiling on their 2015 model C-class catamaran, competitors figure they now have a two year technology edge on the competition.

A very basic primer on how to control the foils on Groupama. There will be a quiz at the end of class. There will be bonus points if you can explain the function of the wooden wedge in the operation of these foils.


Daggerboard kant and rake systems on Groupama from Turtle Danger Productions on Vimeo.

Poor Man's GPS Course Tracker

In the discussion of what are the fastest planing angles for hiking singlehanders (see the comments to this post) and how to determine them, Jim Champ sent along a link to his excellent how-to article on using a smartphone as a GPS course tracker. In following his procedure, except for the smartphone, everything else seems to be free. Highly recommended reading for the geeky sailor somewhat strapped for cash.

Seen at the 2014 U.S. Sailboat Show - Part 1 - Dinghy Rudders

I did attend the U.S Sailboat Show this year - as usual somewhat late in getting around to posting on it.

How deep is your rudder? Probably not deep enough when looking at the rudders to these three performance dinghies exhibited at the show.

Rudder for the MX-Next

Rudder for the RS Aero.

And the winner for the deepest, narrowest rudder goes to the Zim 15.

Sailing Videos: Ain't Technology Grand!

Forget about strapping a GoPro to the end of your boom, or somewhere up around the bow, or at the masthead. Booooring! Get yourself one of those $600 radio-control helicopters, the four rotor kind designed to hold one of these small video cameras; fly it around and get all these cool shots from 20 to 40 feet above the water. This is the first sailing video I've seen using this new technology. Expect to see a slew of these aerial sailing movies.


Fall DinghyFest 2013 from DFWDrone.com on Vimeo.

Sail Cloth for Small Sailboats

Last winter the open sailing canoe guys (well mostly one gal, Marilyn Vogel) asked me to jot down some thoughts on sailcloth for sailing canoes for their newsletter (in my varied professional career, I have been a sailmaker - though not at the present time). The main issue I was asked about for the open canoe class was their rules referenced a now defunct sail cloth (hence the section on Bainbridge cloth). Though most of the small boat sailors out in the bloggosphere sail one-design boats where they don't worry about the type of sailcloth they are putting up the mast (alert, alert, technical data to follow, ignore if you don't care), there may be a few out there who have some interest in options for small boat sails.

New Production Dinghy from France

Romain, "Earwigoagin's" European correspondent, emailed a heads up about Group Finot's new production dinghy, a 4.3 meter, 14 footer called the "Albatros". Looking at the Albatros website, it definitely sports a wide wedge shape hull. The "Albatros" appears to be the first production sailing dinghy to try to leverage the Transat monohull hull shape into a smaller size. According to the website the "Albatros" is targeted as a two man lightweight sailing dinghy for families and young people.

Here is a side view I lifted from the website..........

The specs on the "Albatros" are as follows.....

• Hull length 4.3 m 
• Hull width 1.95 m 
• Hull weight 72 kg 
• Ballast in swinging CB 30 kg 
• Total hull and CB weight 118 kg 
• Max load 240 kg 
• Mainsail area 10.2 m2 
• Jib area 4.4 m2 
• Assymetric Area 17 m2 

Besides the really wide, wide stern, some of the other design features that seem interesting or odd (take your pick) are.....

• Hull is formed thermoplastic out of a recyclable plastic called Evolite by Technyl. The hull uses 3 pieces glued together.
• Carbon mast is standard and from the video, looks like the mainsail zips onto the mast like a windsurfer.
• The weighted centerboard doesn't swing up into the hull but remains outside the hull when raised.
• The blades, including the weighted centerboard, are made of the thermoplastic, which must be an engineering feat in itself to make them stiff enough.
• There is a bow insert at the stem which will take most of the abuse of running into the docks.
• And the price is an eye-popping low, low 6000 Euros (7620 USD at todays exchange rate). That doesn't include the assymetric kit.

Here is a video showing the rigging and sailing of the "Albatros".....

Group Finot's website makes no bones that there is a definite intent to market the "Albatros" worldwide.

For the American market, I see several problems, the main one being, the "Albatros" may be trying to cover too many market segments. To be a lightweight boat, it has low freeboard, which means this is a sit on boat. American families who daysail like higher freeboard and sit in bench seats. The transom sheeting for the mainsail is a non-starter; there is no American dinghy that uses transom sheeting. Americans like to tie their dinghies to the dock. I'm not sure how docile the Albatros is going to be tied to the dock with a full battened mainsail that isn't easily lowered unless you take the mast down.

Update: Romain adds a comment to say Group Finot have already addressed the issues I've listed above:

"According to one of the articles, the "transom sheeting" is supposed to evolve to a block centered in the boat. Also the mainsail will slide up the mast in a groove, the rudder will be reduced in size and the jib will have a furler...
This will modify a bit the boat from the prototype shown."

I do look forward to test sailing the "Albatros" when it arrives on American shores.

We did have one US class that explored the wide transom, scow hull with normal bow and that is the Johnson 18. Roger Martin, who had done some Transat designs, designed the Johnson 18 in 1994. Over a hundred were built until 1998 when the Johnson boatbuilding company folded. There is a small fleet at SSA and I intend to get a sail on one someday.

L'Hydroptere and the Crazy Frenchmen

Let's face it; in the realm of big, super fast, crazy assed yachts the French rule supreme. From the large tris and cats to the Open 60 monohulls, there is no other country pushing the wind/water boundaries as much as the French.

As is well known, the French have set a worlds speed record with the very large foiler, L'Hydroptere..

Frankly, you couldn't pay me enough to sail on this rocket. I would be paralyzed just thinking, "What if we crash? What if we crash?". Thats a lot of big pieces going over 50 miles/hr. .

A really great video short on the story thus far, including some footage of their spectacular crashes. I gather a new one is to be on the water this summer..

2012 - l'Hydroptère - The epic in 9 minutes - toute l'aventure en 9 minutes chrono ! from l'Hydroptère (officiel) on Vimeo.

Sailbot 2009; US Naval Academy

The recent developments in autonomous sailboats, i.e. sailboats that can sail themselves, is one of the more interesting subsets of sailboat racing. I find it fascinating; the technical geekiness required to get a total system design functioning at a level to get this robotic sailboat to work. All this development has been spurred by the MicroTransat challenge, the first team to successfully get a sailboat under 4 meters in length to cross the Atlantic by itself. Several teams around the world have been building prototypes but they recently ran into a hitch when those international authorities who control the oceans put a kabosh on the MicroTrasat unless competitors come up with a collision avoidance system on top of everything else.

Here was the first championship in autonomous sailboats held in Austria 2008.



The Roboat used a Laerling hull originally designed by Jan Linge (designer of the Soling and Yngling) as a kids keelboat. The University of Wales used what looked to be a Topper TAZ rotomolded dinghy.

A week or so ago, the US Naval Academy hosted Sailbot 2009 for autonomous sailboats. The rule had been tweaked down to promote smaller boats. Three teams showed up. They had four competitions; a match race, a navigation race, a station keeping competion and a long distance race. I got down during my lunch break and took some quick video of mostly shore preparation. The U.S Naval Academy won but everyone had their problems.



I did catch a glimpse of one of the Navy sailbots during the long distance race narrowly avoiding the big Annapolis tour boat "The Harbor Queen".

Old Farts and Technology; IPOD

I've had an IPOD for close to three years but never used it because all I had for listening was the stupid little earpiece. This Christmas I got an IPOD dock as well as an under cabinet radio with an audio input that I can plug the IPOD into. WOW! Put it into Shuffle mode and who knows what song will pop up next. Forget about Playlists .... I like surprises.

I found one other benefit. Tired of picking up after your grown up kids when they're home for Christmas? Put your IPOD on Shuffle mode, turn the volume up and watch your kids melt away. Must be something about bluegrass, followed by opera, followed by zydeco, followed by early period instrument waltzes, followed by "Arthur Loves Plastic".............