From - Mon Mar 10 13:18:05 1997 Received: from hubbub.cisco.com (hubbub.cisco.com [198.92.30.31]) by cheerios.cisco.com (8.6.10/8.6.5) with ESMTP id MAA21840 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:06:52 -0800 Received: from bolero.rahul.net (root@bolero.rahul.net [192.160.13.1]) by hubbub.cisco.com (8.8.4-Cisco.1/CISCO.GATE.1.1) with SMTP id MAA23747 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:06:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net by bolero.rahul.net with SMTP id AA28451 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:06:38 -0800 From: Randy Devol Received: by waltz.rahul.net (5.67b8/jive-a2i-1.0) id AA12601; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:06:35 -0800 Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:06:35 -0800 Message-Id: <199703102006.AA12601@waltz.rahul.net> To: cliff.sojourner@cisco.com Subject: Blade Runnings 3 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 12186 Blade Runnings Volume 3, June 6, 1996 Hi! (If you received this email, you are on the unofficial Trifoiler email list I maintain. About once per month, (or more often if the news is worthy) I try to update list members with information about the Trifoiler and what I have been doing with Blade Runner. If you do not want to me on the list, let me know.) >From Volume 2: It's now spring. In fact, it is more like a summer heat wave. The problem is that high heat means that the typical summer winds are not blowing. The same can be said for the last few days but the next few weeks look promising. This report covers one long weekend of sailing: 6/1 and 6/2/1996. First, the bad news: I turned 39. The winds for the Delta Ditch Run were predicted to be light. Now the good news: I did not do the Delta Ditch Run. I went to Long Beach to sail with 6 other Trifoilers instead! Friday, 5/31, I was listening to the 3 hourly wind observations for 2 P.M. at Rio Vista (7 knots) and Port Chicago (8 knots). Sadly, I realized that the DDR might be a longer version of the Bob-fest we had at the Vallejo Race. There is nothing quite like having the most negative rating in the fleet and still finishing *last* by a large margin. Really. There is nothing like it and I can't really describe the combination of confusion, chagrin, and eroded confidence that surrounded me after the Vallejo Race. Anticipating a bigger battle with the sun than the wind, I called Greg Ketterman to talk about some unrelated subjects. He reminded me that Hobie Cat Fleet 3 in Long Beach was hosting a regatta that weekend and that Trifoilers, though not racing, would be there in force. He predicted between 6 and 8 Trifoilers from parts of California and Arizona. He practically guaranteed good wind. Even if the Santa Ana Winds were blowing elsewhere, the Sea Breeze would blow in Long Beach for us, he said. He also said that a Video Crew would be there shooting sequences for a kid show and some other projects. He wanted as many Trifoilers as possible to try formation flying. Now that sounded like fun. I could hardly sit still. Relishing the challenge of completely changing my plans, I started making phone calls. "Yes, you can have Monday and Tuesday off." "Yes, your Marriott gift certificate can be used this weekend at the L.A. Airport hotel." "No, I can't go but don't worry about it." said my regular crew, Chris. (Thanks Chris! That was real big of you!) And so it went. At 9 PM, we departed San Jose. At 11:30 the next morning, we arrived in Long Beach. Saturday, there were 6 Trifoilers (including me) and probably more than 40 Hobie Cats. Among the Trifoilers, there were two from the factory (Greg and Matt), two dealers (San Diego and Phoenix) and two owners (Ted and me). Getting the Trifoilers from the end of the concrete to the water line was the hardest part of the weekend, except for Matt, who was trying out experimental beach wheels. (They worked schlicker than schnott!) By the time the boat was on the wet sand, set up and ready to go, the wind near the beach was around 10 knots, with more wind 200 yards off the beach. (All wind speeds were measured using a digital device, my finger.) While Greg helped the newest owner finish setting up, the rest of us took to the water, some faster than others. For the rest of the day, the wind varied from 10 to 15 knots (with a couple of dips into the single digits) : nearly perfect. I have been using the Speedmate speedometer with great success on Blade Runner. It displays speeds accurately down to about 2 knots. However, on Saturday, I fired it up and noticed two things: the display was showing meters/second (not knots) and the speeds were either impossibly high or they were jumping around in a way that made no sense to me. There is only one button and it is not obvious how to change display modes but after a while I remembered. When I fixed the problem late Saturday, I learned that the calibration feature forced the display to show a speed 6.1 times our true speed. At some point, the button must have been pressed by clothing or my deodorant. I fixed it and got reliable results all day Sunday. Other toys: Greg showed off a surfing helmet from Australia. The visor flips back for sailing with the wind in your face. With the visor down, no more 35 mph nasal irrigations. It is very light weight and looks well built. I did not try it on but I will contact Murray's to order one or two. It looks just too cool, adds a safety margin in case of an accident, and it makes the ride more comfortable. A WIN all way around. I am encouraged by a report from Matt in the other factory boat. Matt used to race Miracle 20's in Fleet 3 and so could not resist showing off. He reports that by pointing as high as he could without dropping off the foils, he kept up with the Miracle fleet upwind, passing the slower boats. Rounding the windward mark he was not in the lead but quickly took the lead downwind because the Trifoiler could sail faster and deeper (more directly downwind) than all the 20's. Cool. Sunday was more of the same: 10-15 knot winds, sun, 1-2 foot chop behind the breakwater. More Trifoiler heaven, or nearly so. The lulls to 10 knots (or slightly less) coincided with our efforts to fly in formation. We did not really succeed as a group. Individually, we each took turns showing off for the camera, and that was fun, but trying to fly in formation was made impossible by the difficulty we each had, in turn, getting up in only 10 knots of wind. It was also made more difficult by the fact that the course we had to sail crossed the Hobie Cat race course. Twice I was reaching toward the camera on the foils and had to abort because I did not want to interfere with (run over) the racing fleet. Oh well. Civility has it's price. :-) Observations: Saturday afternoon, I realized that Long Beach was the birth place of the Trifoiler and it showed. Greg spent hundreds, possibly thousands of hours testing various configurations in these waters. The foils were just tall enough to clear the chop behind the breakwater. The sails were perfectly matched to the wind conditions there. The fine sand meant designing the Trifoiler for beaching. And so on... A thousand little design choices were influenced by the conditions at Long Beach (and Cabrillo Beach) and it showed. Blade Runner felt at home in these conditions. The narrow range of conditions we experience over the weekend perfectly matched the narrow conditions in which the Trifoiler *really* shines. Talking to Greg on the phone Friday, I did not realize that formation flying would be so difficult. The speed increase that comes with rising out of the water means that if one boat foils first, that boat leaves all other boats behind. Flying in formation requires *getting* out of the water at about the same time. That proved the most difficult. We will all have to keep practicing. :-) Even in these conditions, a surprising number of problems occurred with the boats. I broke a hook on the foil retraction line and found my shock absorber had come apart on the trip there. Ted and Matt hit debris in the water and sheared their safety rudder shear pin. One of the dealers pulled the main sheet pulley out of the deck and had his Sunday sail shortened. Ted managed to drop the compression strut accidentally. And that was not all. In conditions that were not extreme, the boats seemed to break a little too easily. When I returned home, I found a video from Hobie Cat that talked about some of these potential problems in some hulls and provided materials for fixing some of them. Not good. Add this to the under-spec booms (replaced by Hobie Cat), under-glassed forward deck (repaired by Hobie Cat employees Greg and Dan) un-zipping zipper (repaired by Hobie Cat), bent compression strut pins (replaced by Hobie Cat), freyed main sheet from the sharp-cornered bracket, unglued glass on the speedometer, and all the problems I have heard about from other owners, and I am not, right now, all *that* confident in the strength (or bay worthyness) of the boat. Oh, and I now have to replace a trailer light also. :-( The bulb burned out because the water tight module was not. Oh, and the plastic sleeve on the ama mounting pins on the trailer needs replacing (replaced by Hobie). And the seam between the molded passenger seat and the hull separated and needed to be re-glued. Getting a repair video and supplies is much better than nothing but is not sufficient to restore *my* faith in Hobie Cat as a company. The video was unscripted, un-organized, and incomplete. 30 minutes of preparation (writing a script, rehearsing the script) would have made the video look like the company cared more. As delivered, the video gives the impression that these problems are serious but not serious enough to spend more than 10 minutes to make the video. The video will guide people through the repair, but at this point, I am talking about the company image. The Hobie image needs either a Trifoiler recall (the dealers do the repair) or a better prepared video. At this point, I almost feel about Hobie Cat the way I feel about Social Security: If it comes through for me, I will feel more surprised than justified. To be fair, Greg and Dan have always done what they said they would do, and have always personally gone the extra mile (literally sometimes) to repair faults and provide advice. I just wish they did not have to go to those lengths. I just wish that Trifoiler owners did not need that kind of attention from the designer. So, I will spend this coming weekend smelling epoxy and wearing rubber gloves instead of smelling salt spray and wearing sailing gloves. :-( As you might expect, the Trifoilers were the last to leave the beach, Sunday evening even though most of them had far to go before reaching home. Bragging about bursts of speed was a pleasant way to prolong the weekend. But it did end, and we all departed, happy with the sailing they had enjoyed but wondering about the boat and what will break next... -=O=- Randy ////||||||\\\| randyd@shell.portal.com _______\o_____//////||||\\\\| / Blade Runner ///////||\\\\\|===>\ Trifoiler Hull #42 ||______________________<=====||====>\__> ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ || ~~ \__> ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ P.S. (Check out the Trifoiler coverage in Latitude 38 on pages 141-142, and the picture on page 146.) P.P.S I was kind of bummed by all the equipment problems. Volume 3 was originally sent without more of the fun stuff so here it is: Using my GPS, the Speedmate, and the pitot tube speedometer, I am pretty sure I reached 32 mph or 28 knots. That was probably a broad reach in 18 knots of wind. It is really hard to get accurate true wind speeds and directions. (See below.) When on the foils, I was usually sailing faster than 20 knots. Even with the up/down wind on Sunday and about 1.5 hours of not sailing at all (rest stops!), I sailed 32 nautical miles between 11 and 4. One reach alone was a mile completely on the foils (in about 3 minutes). As an experiment, I sheeted in tight and just steered the boat through 50 degrees of heading. The true wind must have veered through the same 50 degrees but the apparent wind angle stayed constant. As I turned down, the boat speed increased enough to keep the apparent wind angle constant. Crazy! As a result of that experiment, I am going to pay closer attention to mast rotation. I think I have been sailing with the masts over-rotated all this time. There are rotation stops in the lines that I may move. I am also going to calibrate my wind vane.