Team Seacats

This site’s primary focus isn’t shifting but I found this video and couldn’t help myself (especially now that our site software allows embeded video). Just last week, the Round Texel race took place yet again in Holland. It’s a 60 nautical mile race around an island that is attended by up to 600 catamarans – clearly the largest catamaran race in the world. We even had some local sailors, Nigel Pitt and Alex Shafer, competing this year on a Nacra 20 (they finished pretty well too!)

This video is a flashback to 1985 and shows some really old versions of modern catamarans and a lot that haven’t changed. The first to finish in 1985 was an Olympic Tornado that also broke the record previously set by American catamaran designer, Bill Roberts, on one of his own Supercat 20s. You will also see one or two Supercat 20s in the video. The Olympic Tornado boat design that wins first to finish in this video has undergone some major changes and in the current day comes equiped with double trapeze (it was a single trapeze platform back in that day), a larger square head mainsail, a spinnaker, and a carbon fiber mast. Something else of note is that modern beach catamarn popularity in the US is miniscule compared to that of Europe even though the modern beach cat is a west coast American creation. It strikes me a little odd that the commentator is from the US..and the commentary sounds like it came from the 70s. None the less, it’s entertaining!

I know things have been a bit slow around here this week and after stumbling upon this video, I thought I share it. Here’s a Hobie 33 (not a catamaran…but at least it shares a major catamaran manufacturer) sailing offshore in a light breeze. The boat’s name is “Shark Bait”. I thought for sure this was a gag but about half way through you can see enough to dismiss that notion!

I spent the early part of this week in St. Louis on business (Sorry Mike H.! I started to call but we were working 12 hour days).Before I left, I sanded a bit on the F18 bow and found a spot where the new gelcoat was a little thin – it left a dark spot from the repair beneath. I’ll have to shoot another couple of coats on it before I go any further. We’ll be doing that this weekend.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Rick Harper took the win today in another light air race that was made or lost on the starting line. David and I had positioned ourselves for some clear air but a Supercat 20, with more speed than we could escape from, dipped the line right in front of us leaving us in his vacuum. By the time we got free, we were in last place of the F18s. David and I managed to climb back a few places but David Lennard / Mike Krantz and Rick Harper / Kip Goodman were well beyond reach. Because there were so many boats at this regatta, it was goint to take an extensive time for the results to be tallied – so we decided to hit the road early and get home with time to unpack. On the upside, we were fast this weekend, but suffered from a couple of bad starts. We’ll be back soon.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

Yesterday was a bit patchy – occasionally we would get an 8 to 10knot lane of breeze. With a large mixed fleet including J24s, J22s, Melges 24s, our two fleets of catamarans, and others, the RC was able to get one race off in the fluky breeze. Mike Krantz and David Lennard checked out early by catching a puff and riding it downwind while Rick Harper on his Hobie Tiger and us on our Nacra F18 just ‘missed the bus’. Rick and I duked it out fighting for 2nd and although we just gained the lead on the last C-mark rounding, I didn’t keep tight enough cover and we slipped into a hole in the breeze while Rick moved ahead. We fought hard tacking to try and break free of their cover but only put ourselves in yet another hole and finished a couple of minutes behind Rick. It was a frustrating kind of racing – but we did have some good moments. We experimented with our boat setup for the light breeze and were happy to find that we had good speed where we have been struggling in the past.There’s no breeze out there right now, so it’s questionable if we’re going to get any racing in today – a bit of a let down because we really want another shot at it. At the moment we’re all checking our boat tuning and comparing notes on the beach. Rick Harper has his boat on it’s side and David Mosley and he are looking at matching the mast curve to Rick’s new main sail. With any luck, some breeze will fill in….

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.