Paint it black

Fathers day weekend found me spending two days getting the anti foul paint on the bottom. Saturday was spent scuffing the bottom and welding anode studs in place. Sunday had me power washing off the scuffing dust, taping the water line, and rolling on two coats of anti foul. This is one of those jobs Id been blowing off and avoiding, but she cant go in the water without this bit of work and it is now off of the list.

The week before, my bud, aluminum sail boat builder, and artist Brian Russel ( THE ART OF BOATBUILDING ) was in town to dedicate a sculpture he built, and stopped by to check on progress. While he was on my site, he gave me a hand installing the saddle for the 10" hydraulic bow thruster. Having another set of skilled hands makes a difference sometimes, and getting the thruster saddle in position while another person is inside working the bolts is a big help. The saddle is a permanent part of the bow thruster which is bolted to the tube and sealed with 5200. The saddle is not meant to be removed as are the other components of the thruster. The thruster leg, and the motor, are fastened to the saddle. The thruster is a 10" hydraulic unit producing 15 hp of thrust. The thruster is powered by a live PTO driven straight off of the Twin Disc transmission.  It was built and designed by Key Power Inc. and its been nothing but a great experience dealing with Jim at Key Power. The component castings are excellent, as well as all the machining. All the parts are machined on five axis CNC machines and it shows by how well everything fits. Having the bow thruster installed now makes the front of the boat water tight, and its checked off of the list. Its amazing how little space the hydraulic thruster takes up.

The last part of the water tight work was getting the prop shaft installed along with the drippless shaft log seal. I went with PYI on the shaft seal, and well just have to see how that works. The installation was pretty straight forward with no issues at all.  I will say that the bilge is filthy, as is the rest of the boat. Theres a good two days of cleaning that needs to be done.

I had ordered the control cables for the throttle and transmission, and Washington Marine had some cables on their shelves that were longer that what I had measured, but told me to see if they could work. The next to nothing price they were going to sell me the cables for was worth trying to make them happen, but in the end, they were too long. The correct length cables should be in by the end of the week or early next week, and once that happens, Ill get them installed.

Theres lots to do before I can order up the travel lift to make the 1500 carry to the river, so Im going to keep telling everyone I have a list that I keep working off of, and keep checking items off of my fictional list.

Cheers

     

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The Crew of Black Cat for Cape to Rio

 Our crew for the 2014 Cape to Rio Race is mostly the same as we had for the 1996 running of this race. Here are bios for two of the crew.

Gavin Muller

Gavin Muller was 21 years old on the 1996 Race. He was the baby of the crew by a long way and received the brunt of the good-natured insults and joking on the voyage from the rest of us. He took it all in very good spirits, was a great crewman to have with us and proved to be very capable in all aspects of sailing our boat at high speed across the Atlantic.

Now, 18 years later, Gavin is a much more respectable age. At least he is now more than half my own age. Gavin cant have had any permanent damage from all of our ribbing on that race because it was he that put the thought in front of me to get the 1996 crew together again for the 2014 race. Wonderful idea, Gavin.

He obviously has a good sense of the ridiculous. The bio that he sent me begins with "I started sailing quite late in life at the age of 14". Heck, most sailors wish that they could have started sailing at that age instead of 30, 40 or even 60 years old. When you are 21 then 14 must be relatively late in life. After his late start in sailing, Gavin hasnt wasted his time and has accomplished much. His achievements include:-

Sank an Optimist on the start line of his first Interschools Regatta.
Rose to captain of his Bishops High School Sailing Club
Was part of the youngest crew to sail the Cape to Rio Race, in 1993
Crewed on "Black Cat" in Cape to Rio Race 1996
Member of line-honours crew in St Helena Race 1996 and sailed return to Cape Town.
Achieved Yachtmaster Offshore in 1997, with better grades than he managed in school.
Sailed his 2nd St Helena Race in 1998 and return voyage to Cape Town.
Moved to England Feb 1999, where he still lives.
Sailed 4 Fastnet Races and all qualifying races.
Sailed 7 Cowes Week Regattas.
Sailed 8 Round the Island Races (Isle of Wight).

Gavin is married to Nicole and they have two young children, Alice and George. He is Head of Operations at one of the most prestigious catering companies in London, so I guess that qualifies him to serve us some imaginative high-class meals in the middle of the South Atlantic.

Gavin with wife Nicole and children, Alice and George.

Gavin in Solent sailing garb.

Sean Collins

In my 60 years of sailing, Sean is the one who has sailed more miles with me than anyone else. We always clicked together on boats and have confidence in each other doing the right thing when needed, including to extricate us from some silly situation into which I have put us.

Sean first sailed at about 7 years old, with an uncle who owned an Enterprise dinghy. The bug bit and he broadened his sailing experiences with the Sea Scouts. Seans first offshore experience came in 1976 with his uncle, sailing from Durban to Cape Town on a newly-launched 45ft ferro-cement cruiser. Continuing further on the long-term cruise was thwarted by the need to finish schooling.

Sean is a surfer and spent a few years sailing Hobie cats before buying his own first offshore boat. This was a 28ft plywood double-ended ketch named "Elise". After breaking the mizzen mast she had lee-helm problems and that was what brought Sean and me together for our long association. He commissioned me to redesign the rig as a cutter. He sold "Elise" after he started crewing for me on my CW975 "Concept Won" sometime later.

Sean estimates that he has sailed roughly 10,000 sea miles with me on "Concept Won" and "Black Cat". He was my chosen partner whenever available for the double-handed races and regattas at Royal Cape Yacht Club and Hout Bay Yacht Club. He sailed with me on numerous Double Cape Races, Telkom Regattas, Old Brown Table Bay Regattas, Hout Bay Admirals Regattas, Hout Bay Double Regattas and the weekend and Wednesday night racing at RCYC, as well as the 1996 Cape to Rio Race.

Sean was in the crew of "Black Cat" right from the start, long before she even hit the water. He spent many weekends helping with building her, much of it doing a sterling and nasty job of epoxy coating and fibreglassing the joints of the drinking water tanks, to ensure that they would not fail us in mid-ocean.

Sean moved to England in 1998, with wife Lanesse (now ex-wife) and three daughters. There they spent time sailing the estuaries of the Thames and acquiring the new skills of safely navigating large tides and strong currents. Eventually they bought "Vortex", a Nicholson 35, which Sean refurbished for family cruising. In 2004 they headed South to find sunshine and spent 16 months cruising to the Canaries via France, Spain and Portugal. From there they all flew back to settle back in Cape Town. A year later Sean and his nephew double-handed "Vortex" to Cape Town via Cape Verde, Brazil and Tristan da Cunha.

Bad economic times in RSA resulted in Sean working for a few years in Bahrain, where he joined the Bahrain Yacht Club to keep in sailing. Back in RSA again, work commitments keep him away from home but he gets back to Cape Town regularly. Most of his sailing is currently  on inland waters, where he is an instructor with the youth sail training programme at Mountain Yacht Club on Ebenezer Dam.

Sean with Lanesse and daughters Abbey, Kelsey & Megan

Sean on "Vortex" at Hout Bay Yacht Club.

Gavin and Sean, I look forward to sailing with both of you again.



  

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Cape to Rio 2014 Black Cat Preparations

Start day for Cape to Rio 2014 draws near, now only 4 days away. Preparation of our radius chine plywood Didi 38 "Black Cat" continues. Most of the big jobs have been completed but somehow the list of smaller ones never ends.

Earlier this week we were able to go sailing for a few hours to try some of the new sails, all made by the North Sails Cape Town loft. The mainsail and jib are both carbon and are a real treat to use. They set beautifully to the designed shape and are very stable. There was a bit of swell running and I found the sails to be easier to helm to than the previous laminated Dacron sails, with the sail shape not changing from surging in the swell as happens with a softer sail.

North carbon jib. Sexy see-through clothing.

Photographic conditions were not great, so these are not the best of photos. They show the new carbon mainsail and jib. For purposes of optimising our IRC rating for the race, sail area has been reduced in the headsails, with our big (and very old) Genoas with large overlap gone for good, replaced by a jib that hardly overlaps the mast, does not foul the spreaders or shrouds and is very quick to tack. It also sheets very close and allows "Black Cat" to now sail very close to the wind. This will be a great sail any time that we have to go to windward.

North carbon mainsail

The reduction in headsail area is somewhat compensated by the larger roach of the new mainsail. The larger roach and stiffer fabric means that there is a lot more conflict between backstay and mainsail, so she now has a flicker on the backstay, which you can see on the photos, to lift the top of the backstay away from the sail to allow it to pass through.

The new Code zero has massive area and showed itself to be surprisingly close-winded also, able to sheet to a very close reach, almost a beat. With large shoulders, it is also very stable and much easier to steer to than a conventional spinnaker. This sail rates as an asymmetrical spinnaker rather than a Genoa, allowing us to sail to windward with a spinnaker in light to moderate breezes.

I have written previously about some of our crew for this race. Without bio info from the other two, here is as much info as I can give for them from my own knowledge.

Dave Immelman is the normal skipper of "Black Cat" and has graciously moved into the navigator slot to allow me to come in as skipper. Dave is very experienced in competitive sailing, having crewed in the South African "Shosholoza" Americas Cup Team, a Volvo Ocean Race campaign and extensive racing in South Africa, UK and the Med. Dave is very tough as well, having rowed 3000 miles single-handed across the North Atlantic Ocean. It was intended to be a double-handed voyage but his partner took ill and was taken off the boat very soon after the start and Dave decided to continue by himself.  We will have many interesting stories to swap on this next voyage. Dave is married to Susan, an award-winning seafood chef. They have a daughter of 5 and another arriving while we are mid-Atlantic.

Dave Immelman at the time of his rowing voyage.

Adrian Pearson is the owner of "Black Cat". He was my partner in her from during construction through to 2000, when he took over full ownership. Adrian loves to sail on her but does not often skipper her, preferring to hand over that job to someone with more experience. Not that Adrian lacks ocean experience, he was in my crew for the 1996 and 2000 Cape to Rio Races, crewed on her for the return from Rio in 2000 and did many coastal regattas and races with me around the Cape of Good Hope. Adrian is a retailer in Johannesburg, co-owner of a large grocery store.  He is currently unattached and has two sons and a daughter.

Dont forget that you will be able to track our progress across the Atlantic. Go to the official race website Cape to Rio 2014 and click on the tracking link at upper right of the screen.

I should be able to make one more post before we sail away. I hope to make an occasional post while on the water but cant guarantee that it will happen. Our Internet connection will be via costly satellite phones so has to be used sparingly. We will have a separate boat blog for the race and I will post the address of that blog in my next post here.

Read about our designs at http://dixdesign.com/.

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Black Cat on the Ocean Blue

I am sure that most of my readers are well aware of our adventures on the prototype Didi 38 "Black Cat" in the Cape to Rio Race in January 2014. This is the boat that I built in my back garden in Hout Bay, South Africa and launched nearly 20 years ago. She was the experiment in boat construction that is the basis for all of my radius chine plywood designs, with many hundreds now on the water or in build around the world.

"Black Cat" is once again out on the wide blue South Atlantic Ocean. She is participating in the 1700 mile Governors Cup Race from Simonstown, South Africa, to St Helena, the remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic. Much as I would like to have been there, I was unable to join the crew for this race but they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it without my interference. They have led the monohull fleet both on handicap and on the water from the first position report and remain up there. Only the trimaran "Banjo" leads them.

"Black Cat" at start of Governors Cup 2014. Dave Mabin photo

The crew, led by Dave Immelman, has been having great sailing, with three consecutive days of 200+ mile runs in strong downwind trade conditions. Now they are working their way through the light winds of a high pressure system at lower speed but maintaining their lead. Dave is the resident skipper on "Black Cat" and was my navigator for the Cape to Rio Race 2014.

We wish Dave and his crew continued good sailing and that they can find their way quickly through the high to more good breezes.

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