A couple of people on here asked for results to be posted...

 

The first race of the series was a "round the cans" race in the Solent which was raced in very light airs (wind never above 9 knots) last Saturday.  I am pleased to say that we won our class!  This is despite the fact that I usually hate sailing in light airs.  A full race report can be found http://www.rsyc.org.uk/club/clubspringdouble1.htm - here .    We beat a Westerly GK33 into second place and a Maxi 1100 into third.  Despite being the slowest boat by handicap in the class we were only 24 seconds away from also taking line honours which went to the GK33.

 

Scorpio is a standard Hanse 342 with a self tacking jib (no genoa) and a Sanders Sails asymmetric spinnaker.  We are very pleased to have won on our first double-handed outing, especially as over the three previous years racing my old boat in the same series, the best we ever achieved was a second.

 

For other people with new boats, get your rig tuned - it definitely makes a difference.  Scorpio was delivered just before Christmas and has done about 150NM.  On advice from Hanse UK about new rigging stretching, I had the rig tuned the day before the race.  The rigger put about 7 turns on the lowers each side, six on the intermediates and 5 on the caps to get the mast set up right and the tension correct.

 

The next races in the series are over the first weekend of May when we have two longer races, from the Solent to Weymouth and back again - about 45NM each way.

 

Ed

Congratulations with the victory. Great to hear

We have tuned the rig as follows and hope it's ok when we enter our first race with Abstinenz in two weeks:

Lower: 15 % of wirebreakeage

Intermediate: 15 % of wb

Caps: 18 % of wb
 

/Steen   

 

Great news!

 

Very well done on your first race - you must be very pleased  Please keep us all up-to-date with your progress through the season.

 

Good luck

Dan.

I use a guage and will come back with a report in about a month or so.

 

 

/Steen

Yesterday Abstinez entered the first race of 17 in our local serie. Mentally ready we went out to do our utmost. We did a fair start and tacked very nicely with our new 130% kevlar genua (Quantum X-Fusion 13). The windforce was only about 5-7 knots. We came first in our group to the first mark, then had som problems hoisting the asymm. spinnaker (Quantum Vision 3), but was still marginally in front after the third mark. Then the wind dropped halfway the next upwind leg and unfortunately we did not get wind before our competitors. So we came in last in our group and only did an overall place as no. 38 of 44 in corr. time.

 

The good thing was, that our boatspeed upwind was superior and the new Spinlock spinnakerblocks (BRS 63) did there job.  

/Steen & Anne
  342 # 436

         

This topic is of big interest to me as I am trying to get my 400 rig set up properly for racing. At the moment, there is far too much forestay sag. I did a quick search on the web using your hint above (Selden) and came up with this tuning guide. It looks very good. Is it the one you saw previously?

 

http://www.riggingandsails.com/pdf/selden-tuning.pdf - http://www.riggingandsails.com/pdf/selden-tuning.pdf

 

I'm going to start a separate topic on rig tuning and see what folks have to say.

 

Steve

 

Spring Double* (round the cans): 1st - a light airs race with a shortened course

Weymouth Double Leg 1 (Solent to Weymouth): 8th - Down wind light airs

Weymouth Double Leg 2 (Weymouth to Solent): 8th - Direct down wind all the way - medium/heavy

Cherbourg Double (Solent to Cherbourg): 3rd - Medium reach decreasing - we ripped our Asymmetric early on before wind dropped and really needed it later

Island Double* (Round the Isle of Wight): 4th - Light/Medium airs

Brixham Double (Solent to Brixham): DNF - Light airs: insufficient time to get there and back

Nab Double* (Solent to Nab Tower and back): 1st - Upwind light airs - course shortened at Nab

Autumn Double*: (round the cans): 8th - Very light airs with lots of holes and a tidal gate at East Bramble; badly messed up start

 

We raced in RSYC Club Class (as opposed to IRC which is full of J-Boats with very high tech sails).  Across the whole Series we had two discards, taking these out we were second in class overall by one point behind a mini Transat.  We beat a Bavaria 44 into 3rd, a Dufour 44 into 4th, a Westerly GK33 into 5th, a Maxi 1100 into 6th and a Sun Odyssey 45 into 7th.

 

There is a separate prize for the Inshore Series - the four races marked with an asterisk with no discard.  In this we won our class by six points overall.

 

In summary we are very satisfied with Scorpio and believe she is pretty competitive.  We are going to get a full symmetric spinnaker for next season to help our down wind performance.  I just hope that this and our result do not impact our handicap too much.

 

Ed