Foto copyright Sailing World/Dave Reed
Fuente info Sailing World
Friday, January 15
There's Not A Whole Lotta Runway for the Fling
By SW Racing Editor, Peter Isler
Heading down to Key West brings back many great memories. The venue, both on the water and shoreside is one of the best there is. And I have plenty of sea stories from that tiny island that are still fresh years later. Like the time when we were training before a J/24 midwinter regatta and picked up a guy swimming well offshore. His name was "Will" and his intended destination was Cuba - until we "rescued" him. Or the time Jimmy Buffet walked by our boat (the IOR 50 Locura) and asked me for help putting a crew together so he could enter his boat (a classic woodie). The wives and girlfriends from our crew were eager to oblige.
But I digress, as is easy to do in Key West. This year my focus is the new Wally 82, Highland Fling XI, a powerful Reichel/Pugh designed sloop aboard where I'll be calling the tactics. Highland Fling is a beautiful big boat, with teak decks, push button winches, and a carbon rig taller than an AC boat's. It is probably also the deepest-draft boat ever to enter Race Week. With a draft of 17 feet, and target speeds over 20 knots in big breeze, there is precious little playing field for us between the outer reef and the inner banks lining the big-boat race course. We sailed the previous Highland Fling (another Wally with about a meter less draft) in KW two years ago and were somewhat constrained by depth issues in many of the races. This year, that problem will be greatly exacerbated by both the new boat's deeper draft and its much higher speed potential. Suffice to say, I'll make sure navigator, Matt Wachowicz, is always close by.
So I've been stressing about avoiding putting high speed divots into the seabed with our keel bulb for the past few days. But paranoia will destroy you, so it's time to shift to something practical, like winning races. Key West is Highland Fling's third race and first time around the buoys. Owner and helmsman Irvine Laidlaw has plotted a full schedule for the boat this year, in the Caribbean and then in Europe. Key West provides an ideal opportunity to quickly get the boat and the crew up to speed on tight windward-leeward courses. I'm thinking of KW a bit like spring training, with lots of repetitions to get our chops down. On the racecourse, Highland Fling will be a bit of a fish out of water, (hopefully not literally), with no other similar sized competition. To win races here we'll have to beat the TP52s in our class by about 20-percent of our elapsed time—12 minutes for every hour on the track.
Having sailed maxi's a fair bit over the past year, I've seen first hand the advantage the smaller boats have at the corners of a short, windward-leeward course. The smaller boats are simply easier to sail crisply, spinnakers go up and down faster and the boat gets ripping faster out of tacks and jibes. Key West races feature multiple laps and relatively short legs (in 15 knots of windspeed, Highland Fling will sail a 2-mile downwind leg in less than 10 minutes!). Plus, there will be times where shallow water will restrict our ability to play the shifts. It won't be easy, but we've got a great team on board and our challenge will be to hone our skills at the corners in our three days of practice so we leave as little on the table as possible at the marks during the races. So boathandling will be our primary focus during the practice days (hopefully we don't get blown out, because we need all the practice we can get). I see that as being the area where we can make the biggest gains for KW-style racing. The first order of business will be to work up a brand new string-takedown system.
It should be a great week for Highland Fling and if all goes well, by the last day of racing, we'll have learned so much about our boat, and be sailing it at a much higher level of proficiency. This winter training in Key West should pay off handsomely in the coming year of racing where HF is slated to do regattas against other maxi boats and in the Wally Yacht fleet.
Fuente info Sailing World
Friday, January 15
There's Not A Whole Lotta Runway for the Fling
By SW Racing Editor, Peter Isler
Heading down to Key West brings back many great memories. The venue, both on the water and shoreside is one of the best there is. And I have plenty of sea stories from that tiny island that are still fresh years later. Like the time when we were training before a J/24 midwinter regatta and picked up a guy swimming well offshore. His name was "Will" and his intended destination was Cuba - until we "rescued" him. Or the time Jimmy Buffet walked by our boat (the IOR 50 Locura) and asked me for help putting a crew together so he could enter his boat (a classic woodie). The wives and girlfriends from our crew were eager to oblige.
But I digress, as is easy to do in Key West. This year my focus is the new Wally 82, Highland Fling XI, a powerful Reichel/Pugh designed sloop aboard where I'll be calling the tactics. Highland Fling is a beautiful big boat, with teak decks, push button winches, and a carbon rig taller than an AC boat's. It is probably also the deepest-draft boat ever to enter Race Week. With a draft of 17 feet, and target speeds over 20 knots in big breeze, there is precious little playing field for us between the outer reef and the inner banks lining the big-boat race course. We sailed the previous Highland Fling (another Wally with about a meter less draft) in KW two years ago and were somewhat constrained by depth issues in many of the races. This year, that problem will be greatly exacerbated by both the new boat's deeper draft and its much higher speed potential. Suffice to say, I'll make sure navigator, Matt Wachowicz, is always close by.
So I've been stressing about avoiding putting high speed divots into the seabed with our keel bulb for the past few days. But paranoia will destroy you, so it's time to shift to something practical, like winning races. Key West is Highland Fling's third race and first time around the buoys. Owner and helmsman Irvine Laidlaw has plotted a full schedule for the boat this year, in the Caribbean and then in Europe. Key West provides an ideal opportunity to quickly get the boat and the crew up to speed on tight windward-leeward courses. I'm thinking of KW a bit like spring training, with lots of repetitions to get our chops down. On the racecourse, Highland Fling will be a bit of a fish out of water, (hopefully not literally), with no other similar sized competition. To win races here we'll have to beat the TP52s in our class by about 20-percent of our elapsed time—12 minutes for every hour on the track.
Having sailed maxi's a fair bit over the past year, I've seen first hand the advantage the smaller boats have at the corners of a short, windward-leeward course. The smaller boats are simply easier to sail crisply, spinnakers go up and down faster and the boat gets ripping faster out of tacks and jibes. Key West races feature multiple laps and relatively short legs (in 15 knots of windspeed, Highland Fling will sail a 2-mile downwind leg in less than 10 minutes!). Plus, there will be times where shallow water will restrict our ability to play the shifts. It won't be easy, but we've got a great team on board and our challenge will be to hone our skills at the corners in our three days of practice so we leave as little on the table as possible at the marks during the races. So boathandling will be our primary focus during the practice days (hopefully we don't get blown out, because we need all the practice we can get). I see that as being the area where we can make the biggest gains for KW-style racing. The first order of business will be to work up a brand new string-takedown system.
It should be a great week for Highland Fling and if all goes well, by the last day of racing, we'll have learned so much about our boat, and be sailing it at a much higher level of proficiency. This winter training in Key West should pay off handsomely in the coming year of racing where HF is slated to do regattas against other maxi boats and in the Wally Yacht fleet.
