pteron
Member
Every now and then you have a day that you'll remember for the rest of your life. Yesterday was one such for me.
A good friend asked me to help him move his racing trimaran back from the Isle of Wight to Mersea in Essex. I used to race with him a lot, but that was on his old boat which was lovely but relatively slow as it was a touch heavy at 4.5 tonnes for a 44ft trimaran. The chance to sail on this new, purpose built racer, 40ft, 2.5tonnes, all carbon fibre, was too good to miss, so Friday found me sampling the delights of mask covered railway travel to meet up at the Portsmouth Fishbourne ferry.
The tri, Morpheus, was moored on the personal jetty of a multi hulling Swiss banker's 'n'th home on the Wootton Creak.
What a beast!
The winds weren't forecast to be particularly strong, barely more than 10 knots for most of the way, and our routing program suggested about a 22 hour journey to Essex, but I was still excited to sail her. In fact for most of the journey we had intermittent 5-10 knot winds with periods of no wind, so ended up motoring a lot. But the promise was there when we did get wind, she'd power up in 5 knots of wind and sail at 7-8 knots.
We watched the sun go down...
and next morning watched it rise...
passed dungeoness...
and began to think we weren't going to get to sail much.
But once around the corner, the wind started to pick up, and we sailed upwind at around 12 knots in 8-10 knots of wind. She consistently sails faster than the wind!
We deliberately stayed out and gained height so we could have some fun. And fun we had. We finally had the angle to head in to Mersea with the code zero flying. With three of us sailing, me on the helm, my mate on the gennaker sheet and a guy on the main sheet we were off.
Like greased lightning.
This boat is almost square, so approaching 40ft wide. I'm on the upwind hull with a long tiller extension so I can sit out, It feels like flying, I'm 12ft up in the air, the main hull is barely in the water, we are flying on just the leeward hull. Spray from the hull in the water drenches the cameraman, the guy on the gennaker winch, and threatens the main sheet man.
The wind is only about 15 knots, but we're already touching 18knots boat speed.
'Heat her up' calls my mate, so I head up into wind a touch, the leeward hull threatens to bury, capsize is a real danger, but he calls to head up even further. Many years spent flying hulls on beach catamarans has given me the skills, but there's a huge difference between capsizing an 18ft catamaran and doing the same to a 2.5 tonne 44ft trimaran with 5 people on board! The adrenaline is coursing through me, I push the tiller even further and she picks up...
19 knots..
20 knots...
21 knots...
22 knots.
It's crazy fast, around 150% of windspeed. Spray whooshing, crew yelping, there's a huge grin on my face and I'm concentrating on that leeward hull like my life depends on it.
Oh, it does!
It buries, I bear away, the sheet monkeys dump too, de-powering both sails to recover and then I head up again. I'm the lucky one, dry as a bone, all I have to do is steer so we don't die. They have to wind these huge sails back in again
Instead of the 3-4 hours it would have taken to motor in, we cover it in about 40 minutes.
Buzzing we stow the sails, and moor up.
I haven't stopped buzzing yet.
A good friend asked me to help him move his racing trimaran back from the Isle of Wight to Mersea in Essex. I used to race with him a lot, but that was on his old boat which was lovely but relatively slow as it was a touch heavy at 4.5 tonnes for a 44ft trimaran. The chance to sail on this new, purpose built racer, 40ft, 2.5tonnes, all carbon fibre, was too good to miss, so Friday found me sampling the delights of mask covered railway travel to meet up at the Portsmouth Fishbourne ferry.
The tri, Morpheus, was moored on the personal jetty of a multi hulling Swiss banker's 'n'th home on the Wootton Creak.
What a beast!
The winds weren't forecast to be particularly strong, barely more than 10 knots for most of the way, and our routing program suggested about a 22 hour journey to Essex, but I was still excited to sail her. In fact for most of the journey we had intermittent 5-10 knot winds with periods of no wind, so ended up motoring a lot. But the promise was there when we did get wind, she'd power up in 5 knots of wind and sail at 7-8 knots.
We watched the sun go down...
and next morning watched it rise...
passed dungeoness...
and began to think we weren't going to get to sail much.
But once around the corner, the wind started to pick up, and we sailed upwind at around 12 knots in 8-10 knots of wind. She consistently sails faster than the wind!
We deliberately stayed out and gained height so we could have some fun. And fun we had. We finally had the angle to head in to Mersea with the code zero flying. With three of us sailing, me on the helm, my mate on the gennaker sheet and a guy on the main sheet we were off.
Like greased lightning.
This boat is almost square, so approaching 40ft wide. I'm on the upwind hull with a long tiller extension so I can sit out, It feels like flying, I'm 12ft up in the air, the main hull is barely in the water, we are flying on just the leeward hull. Spray from the hull in the water drenches the cameraman, the guy on the gennaker winch, and threatens the main sheet man.
The wind is only about 15 knots, but we're already touching 18knots boat speed.
'Heat her up' calls my mate, so I head up into wind a touch, the leeward hull threatens to bury, capsize is a real danger, but he calls to head up even further. Many years spent flying hulls on beach catamarans has given me the skills, but there's a huge difference between capsizing an 18ft catamaran and doing the same to a 2.5 tonne 44ft trimaran with 5 people on board! The adrenaline is coursing through me, I push the tiller even further and she picks up...
19 knots..
20 knots...
21 knots...
22 knots.
It's crazy fast, around 150% of windspeed. Spray whooshing, crew yelping, there's a huge grin on my face and I'm concentrating on that leeward hull like my life depends on it.
Oh, it does!
It buries, I bear away, the sheet monkeys dump too, de-powering both sails to recover and then I head up again. I'm the lucky one, dry as a bone, all I have to do is steer so we don't die. They have to wind these huge sails back in again
Instead of the 3-4 hours it would have taken to motor in, we cover it in about 40 minutes.
Buzzing we stow the sails, and moor up.
I haven't stopped buzzing yet.
