From - Mon Mar 10 13:18:05 1997 Received: from beasley.cisco.com (beasley.cisco.com [171.69.2.135]) by cheerios.cisco.com (8.6.10/8.6.5) with ESMTP id MAA21993 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:09:24 -0800 Received: from bolero.rahul.net (root@bolero.rahul.net [192.160.13.1]) by beasley.cisco.com (8.8.4-Cisco.1/CISCO.GATE.1.1) with SMTP id MAA01098 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:09:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from waltz.rahul.net by bolero.rahul.net with SMTP id AA28656 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:09:12 -0800 From: Randy Devol Received: by waltz.rahul.net (5.67b8/jive-a2i-1.0) id AA12667; Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:08:06 -0800 Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 12:08:06 -0800 Message-Id: <199703102008.AA12667@waltz.rahul.net> To: cliff.sojourner@cisco.com Subject: Blade Runnings 4 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 2974 Blade Runnings Volume 4, June 17, 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.) This report covers one short day of sailing on 6/15. Sound bite for the media: "It's a darn shame. It really was a darn shame." The occasion was the Corinthian race sponsored by the Single Handed Sailing Society. A 20 mile race around the center of the S.F. Bay. Winds were blowing 15-20 knots all over the course. It looked to be a great day for racing the Trifoiler. It was not to be, however. The short story is that the winds, being from the south, were not from the normal direction and effectively shut down both of the ramps that I was planning to use to launch Blade Runner. The "rest" story is that we struggled for an hour to get the boat out of the ramp area and only managed to put a tear in the port sail. We nearly managed to do much worse but got lucky. At one point, all three bows were burried under the leward dock, the stern was 5 feet above the water, and I thought it might cartwheel over my head and over the dock. The problem was the 15 knots winds and the narrow space between the docks. It was not possible (for me) to get the boat going forward with enough speed to keep Blade Runner from side-slipping before it side-slipped into the leward dock. I think that with larger vertical foils and rudder, I could have sailed out of there, but then again, I thought I could sail out of there with the boat I had. We tried 5 times with 5 slightly different geometries and failed 5 times. The last time, we slid along the leward dock past a dock cleat that grabbed the sail and tore the lower clear panel. At that point, the race had started without me, I was exhausted and in a bad mood. We called it a day and treated ourselves to a large hot fudge sunday. :-) The good news is that I learned about another ramp that would have been a better choice: Emeryville. I also think that launching from the beach at Chrissy Field would have gone smoothly. Next time! The next "event" will be the Silver Eagle race on July 20'th. At this point I don't think Blade Runner will finish. But I will be at the start (if I don't break something else) and try to go as far as I can along the course. Wish me luck. -=O=- Randy ////||||||\\\| randyd@shell.portal.com _______\o_____//////||||\\\\| / Blade Runner ///////||\\\\\|===>\ Trifoiler Hull #42 ||______________________<=====||====>\__> ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ || ~~ \__> ~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~