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Below is a reprint of a post by Slieve on the Yahoo Junkrig forum. I think it will be of interest to everyone here.
Slieve, you really should make an effort to get Poppy to the Stavanger rally this year. The whole of the JRA would like to know how the two boats (Johanna and Poppy) will compare. I'm betting that they are pretty closely matched but likely Johanna will be the quicker boat in light airs. Hi Gary,
Good of you to ask. The answer is 'Very well'. Poppy sailed the Round the Island Race a couple of weeks ago and we
learned a lot. This year Chris Edwards sailed with my son-in-law Ian
and myself. Chris is probably the most experienced junk boat handler
around these parts so I was interested to get his input. It was a
worthwhile exercise.
Poppy is fitted with ST50 instruments giving True and Relative wind
speed and direction, boat speed and a VMG instrument giving VMG to true
wind both upwind and downwind as well as a 2 X expanded scale relative
wind direction, so we are able to measure performance quite well. The
day before the race Chris and i went out for him to get used to my set up, and there was no wind. Most boats out were sitting in a hole in
the water but we found we had 4 knots of true wind and we were happily
able to sail at 2 knots under full control in any direction, including
close hauled. Chris couldn't believe the performance in such light
conditions, and the way he could manoeuvre the boat easily. He enjoyed
getting close to bigger boats and 'beating them up'.
The day of the race was much better, starting with a force 3 and rising
to force 5. One thing we learned is that Poppy will never get a good
result on the handicap system used. The Island Sailing Club run an excellent race with over 1700 entries, and over 800 in the ISC handicap
system, but the only way they can do it is to use a rather crude
handicap calculation, based on length, breadth, depth, area, weight and
with a few %age corrections for keel configurations, propellers, and
use of spinnakers. It cannot differentiate between hull shape and
fineness of entry, so a sharp bowed racing hull will get the same
rating as a blunt entry high accommodation boat. Poppy is a blunt
Westerly 'caravan' and I can sleep my 6'4" across the forecabin, so it
will not slice through the chop raised by hundreds of boats racing at
the same time. Some classes of boat always do well because they get
good ratings, like the International Folkboats. I'm not complaining as
the club do a great job, and I now realise that we simply have to
compare our performance with similar types of boats to see how we are
getting on. When we do this it is clear that we did extremely well,
despite my not so good tactics and navigation.
The first 14 miles to the Needles was a Force 3 spinnaker reach, which
suited the inexperienced spinnaker crews well. Poppy held her own with
even larger 'caravan' boats and easily left all non spinnaker boats
behind. I am confident that if we sailed against an identical hull boat
that we would match their spinnaker performance just by easing the
sheet out.The next leg was a close reach and again we held our own
against boats that should have been faster.
After about 6 hours we were close hauled into a chop and we were cross
tacking with boats who are known to be faster (on more accurate
handicap systems) and should have been 5 miles ahead, and we were
pointing just as high and matching their windward speed. And so it went
on for the full race. After the race both Chris and I agree that Poppy
would beat an identical hulled Bermuda sloop round the cans, even if
they used a spinnaker and we did not. At worst we would hold our own to
windward and would win any tacking duel. We would be faster on all
other points of sail and probably just match them with spinnaker. It's
a great feeling. I've always felt uncomfortable making these claims in
the past, but this time I had an outside witness on board who agrees
with me.
Left to his own devices Chris played with the boat on the way home
after the race. He made a number of observations. Poppy does not slow
down in a tack, and can be held head to wind for a long time before
deciding which tack to end up on. The moment the cambers fills on the
new tack the full drive is there and there is no need to bear away to
accelerate. Chris commented on the instant acceleration. On the day
before and during the race we were sailing close hauled at 40° to the
relative wind, but after the race in fairly smooth water Chris trimmed
for 30° to the relative wind. In 15 kts of true wind we had 4.5 kts
boat speed, and tacked through 77° on the compass. There is no way the Bermuda rigged Longbow could do that. A week later I tried 35° and found I
got best VMG, so there is still a lot to learn.
The net result is that Chris wants my rig on his fore mast (Freedom 30 Junk ketch with hinged battens).
With Chris's help I now see a couple of changes I want to make to the
existing rig, and I have recently learned a few important points from
the model boat world which would encourage building a modified rig. All
this has discouraged me form doing a detailed write up on the rig, but
I know I will have to do it soon. The professional photographers were
out in their Ribs during the race so if you want to get a flavour of
the day look at-
For the 2008 race -
http://www.sailingscenes.co.uk/search.php?gid_search=184&search=Poppy
For this year's race
http://www.roundtheisland.org.uk/web/code/php/main_c.php?map=rir10&style=std&ui=rir2&override=§ion=live&page=photoview2010&pgall=G1&pfield=G1&porder=Name%2CId&pvalue=3+-+The+Needles
Look at the fifth row down and fifth column. This is us rounding the Needles after the first 14 miles.
http://www.h2ophotos.org.uk/#/rtiow-1330-to-1430/4541856644
Note that there are 6 photos in a row, and you may have to scroll to
the right to see the 6th, which I think is the best even if it doesn’t
show the rig. The photographer shot under our bows at about half a boat
length ahead and really took quite a risk to get it. That is our bow
wave you see and not his wake. It was great sailing.
These professional photographers want serious money for even .jpg's and
more serious money if you want to put them on a web site or in a
magazine. It's hard to justify.
So Gary, the answer to your question is that Poppy is doing very well (and possibly could do better).
Now if only I could meet Johanna???????????
Cheers
Slieve
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