Team Seacats

OK…so I probably over-engineered this but what I have here is the ultimate trapeze bunji setup. For those not familiar with catamaran trapeze systems, we have two wires (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the boat) that come down from the mast hound on each side of the boat. We hook into these wires and suspend ourselves, in a standing posture, off the side of the boat to help counter balance the power of the boat. These wires are usually kept in place near the side of the hull with a bunji that runs through the hull and under the trampoline in some way. We had an issue a couple of years ago because the bunjies simply ran across the boat from one trap line to the opposing trap line. We broke a bunji and it left the leeward side trapeze rigging dangling and swinging from the breeze and the wave motion. We didn’t give it much thought at the time and continued to sail on a tight reach. When the wind angle changed and we elected to hoist the spinnaker, we found that the loose dangling trapeze line had knitted itself and the spinnaker halyard with the sidestay. I spent 15 minutes on my back working to free the snarled rigging while staring into the sun and having waves wash over my head every five seconds. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet took off with the chutes flying. That won’t happen again.

I’m sure this has been done before and probably in a similar fashion – but I set out to design a system that accomplishes several things. First, I wanted a system that was separate from side to side. This way if we broke one on one side, it wouldn’t release the trapeze line on the other side. Second, I wanted a backup bunji somewhere so that if we did break one, we could use the backup. Third, I felt like the crew should have some extra length in the bunji under the trampoline since they are the more likely of the two of us to make a tarzan-esque flying trip around the forestay during a pitch-pole (sorry Frank…it’s true!). This “Amazing Flying Bambini” maneuver is usually what breaks a bunji – but having extra length might help it survive. I made a diagram to keep all this straight in my mind. Under the trampoline are two double blocks with a becket and two single blocks. If we break either the crew or skipper bunji, at worst we will lose the backup on the opposite side if it was the crew bunji. Even then, the backup bunji on the near side to the break will remain operational and we can simply transfer the near side trapeze line to the backup bunji where it peaks out of the side lacing with a loop and a stopper ball on it. To better understand the system, click the image below – each color represents a separate bunji. Have I completely gone overboard? Feel free to comment below!

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

With Tim Owens’ help Saturday evening, we set a record time and applied nearly all the mainsail graphics in about three hours. I had spent about 3 hours making the graphics that morning and used up about 160 linear feet of vinyl material (Bonnie and I have a vinyl graphics business on the side). The first year I did a sail like this, I had over 40 hours in it! I only had to apply a couple of graphics Sunday morning (that I hadn’t yet cut) but the mainsail is mostly done.

Today, Travis Phillips came by to help me check off a number of things from the current to-do list. Travis mounted my F18 rudder blades (2nd generation Nacra rudders that are a little wider and get a little better traction in the water) to this boat’s upper castings. My F18 lower castings were already seated to snuggly retain these rudders. We also checked the rudder alignment and it was spot on perfect (whew! One thing we DIDN’T have to work on). Travis did some metal work on the traveler cleat to get the angle of the cleat to suit a trapeze position a little better and replaced two of the foot straps on the back of the boat. Meanwhile, I worked out the details with the rigging at the front of the boat.

I remembered that we had a dilemma last year mounting the TackTick because we could only mount it under the spinnaker pole because of interference everywhere else. The compass was easily visible but the spinnaker pole shadowed the top-mounted solar cell that charges the battery on the compass and it died on us on the last race day (when we needed it the most!). I set out to rig the pole around the compass and it came out quite nicely. Typically the self tacker turning blocks are mounted right up by the bridle wires so there is enough line to feed the roller furler (even then you have to release some purchase to get it to furl). Since we’ve elected to not go with the furler I decided to move these blocks back on the spin pole to allow room for the compass. That doesn’t mean we can’t ever run a furler again…it just means that we’ll have to continue to be creative to get the rigging to work properly if we choose to do so in the future. I also mounted the new Ronstan swiveling cleats for the jib sheet on either side of the front bram provided by SailMax.biz. The next problem was the jib uphaul line and I found a way to route that control back to the beam again without interfering with the compass.

The jib uphaul is now run back under and to each outboard end of the front beam so it can be tweaked from either side of the boat. I used the cleats where the mast rotation control lines usually go. Since we work with mast rotation much more often than jib uphaul, I intend to run the rotation control back to a new cleat to be located near each dagger board where it is more accessible. I’ve got to place an order soon for hardware to finish up the self tacking jib tail and finalize the jib uphaul. We also don’t have a spinnaker halyard cleat or a tack line cleat sorted out yet.

Travis also helped me mount the mid-pole snuffer hoop this evening as well. We’ve done something a little out of the ordinary with the hoop in that it’s mounted further back on the pole (it’s actually “mid-pole” now). I had some grommets added to the trampoline to facilitate the attachment of the back of the bag. My hope is that this will help launch the spinnaker easier. It’s complicated; With the hoop mounted so far forward, the tackline doesn’t pull much spinnaker out of the sock when it pulls the tack out. The tack line is the only line that goes straight into the snuffer so when it leaves the bulk of the spinnaker (which is pretty much in a ball at this point) in the hoop, the halyard has to pull it out at an angle. This takes a LOT of effort on the sailors and is stressful to the spinnaker. Hopefully, the tack line will be able to “birth the baby” by itself leaving the rest of the hoist to go quickly and smoothly. It also presents less windage than being stuck way out there on the spin pole.

We had a tornado warning last night and some pretty bad-a$$ thunder storms blowing through. Between showers, Bonnie helped me secure the boat to the ground with ground screws. There was no time to unstep the mast (and I wasn’t terribly keen on doing so with lightning all around). The boat weathered the storms nicely.

I did get a little work in on the spin pole. I removed it and took it inside the workshop to remove the end cap and the eyestraps on the end so I could remove the wire rigging from it. I shortened the new wire rigging (because it was too long even after sending back the first round) with the intention of using 1/8″ spectra to tie the thimble end of the rigging to the pole. This gives some adjustement on the spin pole height too. I re-rigged the spin pole this morning and tied in the spectra with three loops. Because I don’t have the upmost confidence in soft lines in this application (chafing) I’ll tie a separate safety loop between the end of the rigging and the pole. This way we would still notice a failure but it wouldn’t end our day.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Here’s another shot I just wanted to share with you folks. The boat is really coming around. I still have a lengthy “laundry” list but we’ve got some more help coming in this weekend to hopefully get the boat about 90% finished.

We’ve changed the video player to pop-up automatically on the main page from today until the Tybee 500. We’re really looking forward to the aerial and onboard camera footage that will be provided by AdventureOnline.TV!

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

It’s not quite that close yet, but it’s getting there. I got the sails up tonight and determined that I have to modify some of the rigging. I need to cut off a tail on the forestay that was setup for the ‘new’ jib system (which is not reliable enough IMHO for ocean distance racing). We’ve gone to the old-school wire halyard for the jib instead and the extra ring is just hanging loose up near the top of the jib.

I still can’t get the right length spinnaker pole bridles, so I’m going to have to cut these, re-swage them, and since they will now be too short, use high-strength vectran to fine tune the spinnaker pole height. It’s nice to have this adjustment anyway.

Because we forgot to rig the spinnaker halyard the other night, I wasn’t able to check the hoist height of the spinnaker (a concern of mine since we had some trouble with the new Nacra20s at the U.S. SAILING Multihull Championship). We’ll have to lower the mast and re-run the halyard to check it too.

There was an additional problem we had at the Championship with a patch that wraps around the luff of the mainsail near the foot – it jams in the entry to the luff groove in the mast making hoisting the sail difficult. As the mainsail is downhauled this patch transitions the entry point leaving it jammed and with some downhaul on the main. Eventually the patch begins to stretch open making the issue worse and when it comes time to drop the sail (we have to raise it slightly to clear the halyard hook at the top of the mast) it can be impossible. We need to find a solution to that.

Tommorow night I’m going to run around the boat with a tape measure and make a list of the needed hardware and lines.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.