Category Archives: Sailing

Sailing, Security

2012 Delta Ditch Run – Nacra F20 Carbon Takes Line-Honors

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Results have not yet been posted but the June 2, 2012 Delta Ditch Run was a wild ride. The weather forecast was for sun and a stiff downwind breeze with flood tide. Everyone knew they were in for a fast race of 65 miles if they could just keep their shiny side down. Here’s the first video I’ve found posted. It’s from Twisted, a Farr 40 (PHRF 0), during the early minutes of the Division A start.

Nearly half-way through the race even big, experienced boats in Division A showed signs of trouble. I watched Tiburon, a Santa Cruz 37 (PHRF 27) spin out-of-control. We were in a dual with them on gibes until they botched one and ran aground on a shoal during a twisted-kite broach (“broadie” as some like to say). Fortunately they managed to free themselves as they spun and flipped back with a spectacular second broach. Then, unable to get their kite down, they were dragged hard aground in 3-foot deep water as they fought a third and final broach.

Meanwhile, Double Trouble, a J-125 (PHRF -12), who should have been far ahead of us instead was now trying to catch up. They appeared to be making good time with the giant puffs yet under mainsail alone. Someone pointed out it looked like they had been reduced to just Single Trouble. Conditions were tough in the monohulls, to say the least.

Preliminary results indicate that Bruce Edwards and Eric Willis took first-to-finish honors on a Melvin & Morrelli 2009 design called the Nacra F20 Carbon. Here’s an “official” video of the boat:

I see at least two important points to be made about this boat and its result in the race.

  1. You should sail a catamaran, even in the Bay: Bruce and Eric are extremely talented racers with a lot of experience in local heavy-air conditions on skiffs and the A-Class Catamaran. Line honors couldn’t go to a nicer team. But it is important to note they are not professional sailors. They both hold full-time jobs and this is a new boat to them. Given that conditions in the race were close to survival-level in terms of difficulty — gusts over 30 knts, confused and often steep waves, shallow and narrow channels with hidden shoals and several hours of gibes — they proved that catamaran sailing is a reasonable platform even for amateurs in the Bay Area. Compare their performance, for example, to the sad sight of a fleet of dismasted Melges 20 (five reported). The monohull fleet not only faced damage and disaster but the amateur Melges 20 (PHRF 111) sailors must be seriously concerned about all their upcoming events on the Bay. I wonder if any of them are saying “I could have had a Nacra F20 Carbon! (and for half the cost)”
  2. The forefront of sailing innovation and performance is with catamarans: The America’s Cup 2013 technology and research investment in sailing is clearly trickling down to designs of all sizes. With that in mind more catamarans have been appearing in the Bay Area than ever before and more up-and-coming sailors are showing interest in cats. Just a few years ago I used to get odd looks from professional sailors and campaign owners when I would bring up the Tornado or A-Class, yet today they are the ones who seem to be bringing the latest two-hull designs to the water first. Can you believe there are a pair of matching catamarans, one red and one blue, in the Pegasus compound? And how about finding a new Nacra F20 Carbon for sale by the Oracle team after just a few trials in San Francisco? The attention of the high-performance sailing community and sponsors is shifting quickly to two hulls and, given successes like the Delta Ditch Run, is likely to have an effect on the Bay Area for years ahead. Of course the Delta Ditch Run has been won by a small fleet of catamarans since forever but the big difference is now we have inexpensive boats designed for amateur fleets (F18 and F20), which offer owners the chance to enjoy some of the best ideas and equipment in sailing, and that provide experience directly relevant to moving up to an Olympic campaign or professional career in sailing.

Update: Results have been posted. The Nacra F20c (originally listed as PHRF -81, now TCF Texel 1.124) was officially first to finish at 15:18:11 (Elapsed 04:18:11, Corrected 06:37:57).

Big congratulations to Melvin & Morrelli on the design and to Bruce Edwards and Eric Willis for their win! As much as I truly love sailing a Tornado (a timeless design) and the A-Cat (a development class), I have to admit I can’t wait to be out on a Nacra F20 Carbon…

Sailing, Security

Hawaii Disappearing: USGS Beach Study of Availability

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People have been warning me for years that rising sea levels will erode the coastline. It’s hard to fathom (pun not intended) what that really means. Fortunately a new scientific method is being developed by the American government to quantify the situation. A report called “National Assessment of Shoreline Change: Historical Shoreline Change in the Hawaiian Islands” shows a fairly significant (14 mile) loss of beach.

Because the U.S. population continues to shift toward the coast where valuable coastal property is vulnerable to erosion, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is conducting a national assessment of coastal change.

[…]

A principal purpose of the USGS shoreline change research is to develop a common methodology so that shoreline change analyses for the continental U.S., portions of Hawaii, and Alaska can be updated periodically in a consistent and systematic manner. The primary objectives of this study were to (1) develop and implement improved methods of assessing and monitoring shoreline movement, and (2) improve current understanding of the processes controlling shoreline movement.

Ok, so they’re improving our understanding…and then they give a huge caveat:

Rates of shoreline change presented herein may differ from other published rates, and differences do not necessarily indicate that the other rates are inaccurate. Some discrepancies are to be expected, considering the many possible ways of determining shoreline positions and rates of change, and the inherent uncertainty in calculating these rates. Rates of shoreline change presented in this report represent shoreline movement under past conditions and are not intended for use in predicting future shoreline positions or future rates of shoreline change

Energy, Sailing, Security

AC72 wing design

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We are only a couple months away from the giant America’s Cup catamaran wings being launched. A team led by American Paul Cayard already has theirs on sea trials. Blue Planet Times explains there was a lot of effort put into design regulation.

The box rule governing the AC72 is one big sandbox, so the engineers get to play. Oracle Racing Team Coordinator Ian Burns explains: “I was involved in writing the rule for the AC72s, and when we addressed the wing, we started with a complicated rule, to limit what a designer could do. We added more and more pieces as we thought of more and more outcomes, and we came to a point where it was so complicated—and it was still going to be hard to control, because the more rules you write the more loopholes you create – that we reverted to a simple principle. Limit the area very accurately, and make it a game of efficiency.”

Here’s the basic box rule for the AC72:

Hull Length: 22m (72.18 feet)
Maximum Beam: 14m (45.93 feet)
Wing Height: 40m (131.23 feet)
Maximum Draft: 4.4m (14.44 feet)
Displacement: 5900kg (13007 pounds)
Wing Area: 260 sqm (2798 square feet
Jib Area: 100 sqm (1076 square feet)
Gennaker Area: 400 sqm (4305 square feet)
Crew: 11@92kg/per (203 pounds)

Cayard’s description of the latest engineering challenges to make those numbers work is not your usual scuttlebutt.

“We have 38 hydraulic cylinders. We want to avoid running hydraulic piping to each of them, because that would be heavy, so we have electrovalves embedded in the wing to actuate the hydraulics. But if you had two wires, positive and negative, running to each electrovalve, your wing would look like a PG&E substation, and that’s heavy too, so we use a CAN-bus [controlled area network] with far fewer wires. Still, it’s incredibly complex.

“We wind up with lot of hydraulics,” Cayard says, “and the America’s Cup rules don’t allow stored power, so two of our eleven guys—we think, two—will be grinding a primary winch all the race long. Not to trim, but to maintain pressure in the hydraulic tank so that any time someone wants to open a hydraulic valve to trim the wing, there will be pressure to make that happen.”

Ok, so there’s thousands of hours in design of these wings but there’s something deeply ironic about a 72 foot catamaran with a 130 foot wing that can sail faster than the wind but can’t generate enough power to manage hydraulics without two crew constantly grinding a winch. It seems like a legacy mindset. A big part of the old America’s Cup boats was to be staffed with powerful yet heavy crew who can muscle the boat around. These boats surely call for lighter more nimble crew. What if someone even figured out a way to efficiently use the wind to generate power…?

Perhaps Luca Devoti said it best. These boats are pure racing machines that have power to burn. They should have no shortage of energy at their disposal, or they may even have a reason for absorbing excess.

You have to change completely your way of thinking: the boat is sailing from the moment the wing comes out of the shed because the wing can fly away at any moment.

The trick, as explained in the following video, is to make the wing secure yet light; to keep it as uncomplicated as possible to reduce risk and reduce response time. Most of all, it sounds like the designers want to hurry-up and make up for 20 years of lost time by borrowing technology and efficiency study lessons from the A-Class and C-Class catamaran fleets:

History, Sailing, Security

$200M Sea Shadow Sent to the Chopping Block

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The LA Times has posted an amusing story on the current GSA auction for a giant invisible catamaran.

Sea Shadow

…the U.S. Navy, which — after five years of trying and failing to donate the stealthy Sea Shadow to a museum — is now selling the ship for scrap metal in an online auction. All bids must be in at 3 p.m. Pacific time Friday. But there’s a catch. To win the auction, the successful bidder must agree to dismantle and scrap the Sea Shadow within six months…

What if you are a museum? Suddenly it is not good enough to be a museum?

Obviously the ship’s stealth is limited, otherwise the government would not be able to know what you did with it after winning the auction, right?

This is my favorite part of the story.

“On a typical night of testing, the Navy sub-hunter planes made 57 passes at us and detected the ship only twice,” he wrote. “A typical warship was a very high reflector of radar — a radar profile equal to about fifty barns. Our frigate would show up a hell of a lot smaller than a dinghy.”

That’s good news. The test success suggests that stealth technology in use today has come a long way from $200 million invested in 1985. Perhaps stealthy floating sea barns would now appear to be oar-sized? What’s a unit smaller than a dinghy? Life preserver?

More to the point, who in the world uses barns as a measure of size, especially when looking for something floating on the water? Perhaps it comes from people who think differently than the average person; people who use very precise and technical language to present their view of the world. People like this:

“I am amazed that it’s up for auction and a museum didn’t take it,” said Sherm Mullin, retired head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works. “But when I stop to think about it for about 10 microseconds, it becomes apparent to me that ships are difficult to take care of — a lot more difficult than airplanes.”

10 what? I would not even qualify 10 microseconds as a stop. That’s more like a yield in my mind. A speed bump at best.

Personally I would consider making bids for it but sadly it only comes with one microwave oven. I’d want at least a camp stove if I’m going to spend over $100K on a yacht. Although, I bet that microwave can cook food faster than anything on the market. Tuna in 10 microseconds anyone?