Cox's Bay Skimmer bis

Cox's Bay Skimmer looking much lighter and moored with some of the Cox's Bay fleet; got the fore mast up later but had trouble with the main mast, four stays a little difficult to handle when solo; will finish job tomorrow - with maybe another set of hands.

 

Got both masts up; Jacques gave me a hand with the main mast with the tricky four stays then we sank four Mexican beers with lemons. Tomorrow will laminate the bow sprit on. Cheers.

 

Aha. The French, as usual, are "hitting the spot."
Will the Skimmer do this?
Have to wait a couple of days because the now very light boat got blown over on its cradle in the recent strong winds - and damaged the masts - which I've just repaired.
Also widened the cradle and will widen it even further later. Also have fitted a bow sprit for offwind reacher.

 

Solo on Skimmer today in light winds, never stopped moving - which is understandable when you look at the rig size. Breeze came up later and the boat, well, it skimmed. The shallow cockpit and close to deck booms makes you contort when tacking/gybing. Will shorten the tiller to give a fraction more room.

 

Poor Cox's Bay Skimmer, moored and untouched for months and so has produced a heavy crop of oysters; got a into g and cleaned the poor thing - which is now rubbed down and polished but took some time to achieve.

 

Skimmer foils; eat your heart out, Douglas; notice immaculately cleaned hydrodynamics - this was not the case 6 hours earlier.

 

Sailed Skimmer solo yesterday; was a little concerned with the boat now being so much lighter, that it would be somewhat tip truck - so put one reef in the forward rig - but the boat was stable, even in the harder gusts. But really it needs the weight of two crew. When solo, the bow rides a little high but in the wind against tide chop the boat didn't pitch very much; maybe because of the T foils on dagger and rudder doing their job - but definitely the light forward sections thumped and bashed the waves like a drum. Need crew to calm that down. If the Skimmer, which has a full bow to carry weight of the forward rig, bashes in such stuff, imagine what the latest Mini-Transat fat boats do.

 

Stupidly tipped the Skimmer over a couple of weeks ago, sailing solo, full sail, wind around 12-15 knots, wind against outgoing tide (running tide gets up to 5 knots here) and I suddenly realized was too close to Meola Reef which was showing breaking waves - so quickly tacked ... and got tangled up with the too low boom and too long tiller when sliding across shallow cockpit and the boat was on its side in a couple of seconds. So we sped sideways over the reef, me hanging on to bow sprit and with the masts hitting rocks and making very unpleasant sounds. Eventually ... got boat back on mooring, fore mast broken above hounds and boat half filled with water.
So, fix mast, get rid of booms, now have carbon battens set at sail foot/feet - which allows more clearance, also shortened tiller. The Sloans Beach Regatta was a few days ago and Eric Eason and I sailed without the carbon foot battens (which weren't ready) but although the Skimmer has semi-circular main tracks, couldn't stop the sails from being too full. Put a reef in both sails which lessened problem but was still poor for windward work. However on the two beam reaches the Skimmer lifted up on the dagger and rudder foils and flew along making very satisfying moaning and screaming sounds. Looking forward to sailing with the new low battens.

 

Skimmer is a mess at moment; recent savage NE blow which caused chaos with Cox's fleet and elsewhere, flipped it and heavy cradle over, smashed masts and main dagger board/foil top and filled hull with sediment. So, but not hurrying, will change wing mast chord (have already repaired the inner alloy tube sections which were spliced above hounds) will reduce mast chord to 200mm, was around 300 originally, just too much windage if caught abeam with boat on tide out hard, this plus the boat being much lighter than original water ballasted setup. Thought the heavy waterlogged cradle would have stopped this - but was wrong.

 

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I'm curious what you use to control altitude when the boat is flying on its two T-foils? Any pictures?

 

No pictures at moment; you'll have to wait until I get the Skimmer going again. The rudder foil is set at zero and main dagger foil at 3 degrees. Boat is very stable flying. Patience.
Cheers.