three hulls two hands

time for a change from monohulls...trimarans look fun. Scooby III is a 26foot dragonfly. I said I'd never race offshore boats with no heads. I've changed my tune, though it helps that there will only be two of us. Whilst Simon may be thinking 'hell, if she's really useless i can at least sail this alone' I'm still pretty excited about my first double-handed series.













Having blown the cobwebs away with the frostbite & spring series and having remembered that the pointy end goes at the front it seems to be going okay.














We had a bit of a practice in the Solent double (came second despite being in the lead in this photo) and the Channel Triangle is next on the list. New air bottle for the life jacket, perhaps a hand held gps and a bit of route planning & we should be ready.

a fabulous exception

okay, so displacement boats are BORING...they are however wondrous when one finds oneself in an ocean with 'hurricane surprise' for breakfast.










Whitehaven, a 50 footer headed from the Med to Sydney. Leg one...to the Canaries.

A key function of a mast, apart from holding the boat the right way up is that I can go sit at the top of it (or in this case the second set of spreaders). And when the boat has magic button winches nobody minds winching me up!

Good God, an interior you could swing a cat in. I didn't know they made such things ;)










We were having a good trip - sunny, autohelm, a chilled out 9kts down the north african coast (were those fishing boats or pirates? one moonlighting as t'other was the general concensus...steered clear). We were even bored enough to get the spanners out and tighten things (important things, the rudder for example).

Then the sky went a funny colour and the waves got bigger. We went in search of weather forecasts in any language we could vaguely understand and asked our Sydney based routers to find out what was up. We even hailed a passing cargo ship. I've never heard such a fabulous French accent 'it is a hurricane, go south, go south'.

We met Vince.


















Oddly enough we stopped cooking 2 course dinners and reverted to packets of biscuits and cup-a-soup in between tying down everything in sight and putting away anything in the cabin that could go flying.









Drogue was prepped, sat phone was on and oilies were wet.

There are lots of photos from this trip as a whole but only this handful for the 48 busy hours.

Luckily we were far enough from the eye to be able to get out of the dangerous semi-circle. Our track fro this trip is anything but a straight line! Still, Vince carried on for the coast of Spain where he ran out of energy and we made it to the Canaries only a day later than planned. There are photos of the first night in port...they are however a bit blurred.

Soooo fast

I never did post these great photos of us surfing at a magnificent 15.6 kts in not a great deal of breeze or surfable waves. We're on the way home from Fastnet Rock and, despite 4 days of not much sleep we were all buzzing with the adrenaline of a good surf.

Brambles Bank Robber

"Sand and Deliver."

Clearly winter series racing is a sun-tan affair. There are those in the crew who consider it a practically certifiable idea to race when one has to de-frost the boat but at least it is good preparation for a RBI trip next year.
There seem to be four options for the long distance races next year A) RBI B)Round Ireland C)Cascais & back D)Cascais followed by Middle Sea race. The northerners consider RBI a great idea, those from the other side of the pond who have clearly been cossetted by warm waters are only interested in racing to Southern climes.....we'll see.

Soapdish sets forth

Not a whole heap of breeze at the start of this year's Fastnet but at least it was from the right direction.

Wanna play?

Well to be honest we're just working out what to do next. Some of the crew that took her to the Fastnet Rock (Bernie, Alan, Oliver, Brambles, Graham & David) will definitely be continuing and Dan who had to prioritise the European Space programme over Brightwork (I mean honestly) needs consoling with a new offshore challenge. But given how few people in the UK have cottoned on to the fun and games of Open 30's we are on the look out for a couple more to join the core crew.

Here's a few possibilities of what the future may hold - we might try for the Round Britain & Ireland 2006, Bernie's keen on the idea of the AZAB 2007 (with whom?... the rest of the crew ask) and there's always the Channel Triangle to consider. The longer term might include some Cat 1 stuff but there are serious conversations with the boat's builder (Simon Rogers) to be had before we decide on that sort of stuff (Melbourne-Osaka, yes Simon we know you think it's a good idea!). You'll note that there's no cans racing in here and little mention of cross channel hops...not to say we won't do them but they're a means to an ends not an ends in themselves (what with the prevailing SW on the nose for most of the channel stuff and silly upwind stuff all over the place in cans racing).

Brightwork's first Fastnet

Brightwork and her crew finished the Fastnet 18minutes short of 120 hours. The smile on Oliver's face when he forced a VO60 to duck us kept us amused until at least the Lizard. Admittedly the three wind holes on the way out were a bit of a pain as Brightwork prefers a bit of a blow to faffing about in light airs. That said we devised a novel sail configuration - no main, just kite and putting the symetric fractional up on the mast head halyard to raise it up a bit extra (yeah, yeah we could have a more complete sail wardrobe but where would be the ingenuity then).
Top speed of 15.6 kts (Oliver driving again) kept us smiling and busy on the return from the Rock, even David managed to surf once.

How to measure the success attached to two years of preparation, many conversations with Simon Rogers & Gerry White, new sails, much boat maintenance and finding crew who'd rather be on Brightwork than a bigger more luxurious boat? Well we're not a big fan of the IRC handicapping system as we rate so badly but even so 139th on handicap isn't too dismal for the smallest boat in the fleet. However the placing can't be said to match the elation of finishing, Bernie's state of inebriation after 3 drinks or the pleasures of a bath and clean underwear.

Things that do & don't matter

Things we care about:

• going fast downwind
• building a crew of people who actually choose to race dirty thirties like Brightwork
  
• a dead good boat builder (Simon Rogers) http://www.rogersyachtdesign.com/
  
• a great sail maker (White Sails, Warsash)
• successes of thirty footers elsewhere - Cone of Silence, Towtruck and their pals
  

Stuff that doesn't matter:

• displacement boats
  
• winning on handicap
• little luxuries like standing room in the cabin, privacy for the heads, luxury sleeping berths, gas cooking
  
• anything to do with IRC ratings
• sigma 38's
• upwind/downwind cans racing
  
• superstar egos
  

What is all this Open30 lark anyway?

Educate yourself:

http://www.open30.org
http://www.rogersyachtdesign.com/ - look up past projects and scroll down to Sticky Fingers
http://www.sailinganarchy.com/fringe/2003/cone.htm
http://www.hoodaustralia.com.au/INTORACE.html