everglades challenge sailboat

Sorry. Must have gotten the wrong impression from the photo.

The bigger, light, unballasted skiffs still unnerve me, but that may be just my personal taste.

I suppose, as long as they don't monopolize the sport, they should be as welcome as any one else.

I still stand by what I said about the dagger board. Think of that boat with 400 lbs of crew on board along with 150 lbs of gear, bringing the all up weight up to 800 lbs or more, striking an underwater object at, say, 15 kts.
That would be a blow of about 11,000 Joules. I just don't see the thing surviving.

The board probably won't break, because it has to be able to stand the high side loads, so has to be quite strong. And there's underwater crap lurking everywhere. Shifting sand bars, sunken logs (or boats, for that matter), and just plain discarded junk, does not necessarily show up on charts. And, even with GPS, you can't know exactly where you are at at every second.

If my poky little scow hit the same obstacle, it would probably be doing closer to 6 kts and would suffer a blow of about 5,000 joules. Still enough to consider replacing the single, side dagger board with twin side centerboards (not rue lee boards, because the pivot only fore and aft, and they are both down at the same time). That would be one of the modifications I would make to my Coal Car 12 design.

There are other remedies, of course. The board could be designed to shear off below the hull, or it could have a crush zone on the upper forward corner. With either of these remedies, a spare board should be carried.

 

Sharpii2, the CB Skimmer has a decent sized water ballast tank amidships below cockpit floor (you can see it in the construction photograph) that when fill totals around 90 kgs; I only use it when anchoring or in particularly high winds. The difference from empty to fill is very noticeable; boat slows down, is much more stable. I bucket it in and later pump it out.
Actually the idea of the boat is not dissimilar to your beloved Sharpies, based on work boat concepts but with an emphasis of simple speed and easy handling (and Sharpies are speedy boats) meant to sail in shallow water, be singlehanded, or double or even three handed, a day boat that you can sleep aboard, albeit not that comfortably.
I think many people who prefer knockabout boats, when they see round bilge designs as compared to chine boats, immediately think of expense and race boat attitudes - well that was not the case with the Skimmer; it's an off beach boat with low rig X 2, sails well at decent speed but is nothing like a highly tuned, huge sail area carrying, expensive Antipodean 18 footer with three blokes on trapezes.

 

Re the E-scow: They didn't start until 10 --3 hours late -- but they did start, and they looked quite competent once they got going. Note also that all boats in the EC must be beach launched by the crew. That's a big, awkward boat for 2 people to launch, but they did manage to get it done with the help of about 4 inflatable rollers.

 

Re Mosquito latest news I could find: http://sandybottomkayaker.blogspot.com/

 

thanks! it's hard to keep all the pieces together to follow the race/challenge.

 

So some of the boats ,including, Mosquito, are continuing the Ultimate Fla Challenge after the EC finish, right? I've got to see them sail by here.....

 

ArdieO
(aka Ardie Olson)
Class 2,
Single Male 21' L x 19.5" W
shared spot tracker page


SandyBottom
(aka Dawn Stewart)
and
SOS
(aka Alan Stewart)
Class M,
Double Mixed Sailing trimaran that SOS has designed and built specific for event. Unfortunately water levels now require a switch, luckily MarkP has offered us lend of a Kruger Cruiser. We are all set now. No more cruising, SOS is bound and determined to make me a racer
shared spot page

Whale
(aka Bill Whale),
Class 3,
Single Male Kruger Dreamcatcher
shared spot tracker page


MosquitoMagnet
(aka wayne albert)
Class 1,
Single Male NFD Silhoutte
I managed to get the whole month off by threatening to write a book.


riverslayer
(aka Rod Price)
Confirmed UF2012,
Class 1,
Single Male
17'6" Superior Expedition Canoe
Excited to be doing the race as a fundraiser for Give Kids The World Village in Central Florida.

SaltyFrog
(aka Marty Sullivan)
Class 1,
Single Male 17.5' stitch-and-glue

=============================
everyone below is out?


HairyKerry
(aka Kerry Newell),
Class 1,
Single Male C-1, 17'6" length, 32 " beam
I have completed Yukon River Quest 2007, 2008 and Yukon 1000 2009 and 2011. I hope that those races qualify me for participation as I have not competed in any of the marathon Water Tribe excursions.

JollyRoger
(aka Roger mann)
Confirmed UF2012,
Class 5,
Single Male XRT Canoe,
-Experimental Expedition Racing Trimaran.
24'x14', 4'folded, 30" for road portage. Wood and glass.
Big 16 watertribe amas. 325 lbs empty, 29 day supplies and equip- 125 lbs. Sailing weight 650 lbs. no boat switch, no bike, no shore crew, no whining. Self built for the UFC. This will be its first challange race and hopes are only to have a good run at it. Low river levels really bums me out. Hoping for the best.

Pelican
(aka Nick Hall)
Class 5,
Single Male Hobie AI
Going with a smaller boat to avoid the portaging issues I encountered with the TI in 2010. It will be cramped, but worth it if the state of the Suwanee requires a longer than 40 mile portage.

SewSew
(aka Randy Smyth)
Class M,
Single Male
Sizzor is a 21' Trimaran self built for the Ultimate Florida Challenge.
Astrix is my river boat, a class 1 kayak, 18' x 21".
After 4 years of refinement, I finally feel ready for the UFC 2012.


DolphinGal
(aka Kathy Kenley)
Class 1,
Single Female
Either my Nemo (red-orange) or Impulse (black), with PAS or similar and lots of prayers to Njord, Aeolus,and all other good wind gods. I can't wait for the adventure!!! Is it time yet? Is it time yet? Snore's Hill - if I ignore it will it go away?

 

It's interesting to note how well each of the six classes did.

I think it is very telling about proper expedition boat design.

It seems that the hybrid boats (sail and row/paddle and sail w/electric motor) did quite well, as did the multihulls.

The multihulls (Class5) had a finish rate of 38% (5 finishes/13 starts).

The kayaks and canoes with a sail area limited to 10 sf per crew member (Class 1) had a finish rate of 38% (5 finishes/13 starts).

Canoes and kayaks w/unlimited Sail Area (Class 3) came in at 25% (2 finishes/8 starts)

Canoes and Kayaks w/o sails (Class 2) came in at 20% (1finish/5 starts).

And dead last were the monohull sailboats (Class 4) with a finish rate of about 9% (1 finish/11 starts)

Classes 6 and 6 O.C (boats with electric motors (no plug in recharging allowed) and Out rigger Canoes both finished at 100%, but there was only one entry each, so I didn't count them. If I did, I would put Class 6 with the class 1 boats and Class 6 O.C. with the class 5 boats, as general type descriptions.

It is clear to me that:

1.) Multihulls are the superior hull form for a pure sailboat in this type of event,
2.) mono hulls work best if they are more hybrid like (less emphasis on sail and more emphasis on rowing or paddling or some kind of motor), and
3.) mono hull pure sailboats may do well in milder conditions, but really aren't up to the rough stuff, if they are unballasted. (I believe ORACLE, the only mono sailboat to finish, has substantial water ballast.)

 

here's ArdieO's shared spot tracker page.

I don't know why, but it's like pulling teeth out of an alligator to get these shared spot pages!

note: I also got whale's spot page and it's listed above inthe roster

 

Yep, the physical issue is certainly there, but IMHO it could be got around with suitable training - I'd rather be hooked into a harness for 300 miles than paddle 300 miles like some are doing!

I've been interested in long distance windsurfing since I was a kid who windsurfed and did ocean races and used to spend time watching the seas in races to Noumea and Hobart judging how an expedition board would handle.

I'm not sure the reefing issue can't be solved - De Rosnay did it decades ago when he did the Tuamoto-Marquesa trip. You could fit a wave-sail style turban and lead a line down to the downhaul system (I'm assuming you would use a Raceboard-style downhaul) to lower the head; have the luff pocket end above the tack, and have a higher clew ring. Then you could ease off the turban line to lower the sail, drop the whole thing down, and roll it up around a very light foot batten and move the downhaul and outhaul hooks to the higher rings. Probably not much harder than jiffy reefing a yacht.

Getting a big enough reef to satisfy the rules is another matter, but I can think of some ways of satisfying that aspect.

A Raceboard 7.5 sail reefable to (say) 6m2 has an enormous wind range. You can sail a Raceboard with a 6m2 (or 5.9 for the Olympic Mistral #2 sail) when boats like a standard A Class cat, Laser and Tornado have stopped sailing (allowing for equally-skilled sailors) as far as I can see from sailing against world champs in each type.

The long-distance ability of boards has been proven to be pretty good; apart from the record-making epics like De Rosnay's, others have cruised Pacific island groups in pairs for a week with no resupply. See the bottom post here for a description of a custom-made cruising board that carried the gear for 2 guys for a week's Fiji cruise;
http://www.lbwindsurfing.com/component/p8pbb/beginners-windsurfing-forum/cruising-905?Itemid=&p=2583#p2583

"On a recent trip touring the fiji islands we found the board easily carried
12 litres of water, food for 7 days, cooking pot, fishing rod and tackle,
spares & 4 piece paddle, groundsheet, lightweight shelter (tarp), and
mosquito net. Electronics, clothes and superlight sleeping bag were carried
in a dry backpack."

 

Spidennis,

Good job, can you find Mosquito or Sandy Bottom and SOS

 

Windsurfers

The windsurfer record long distance in 24 hrs is 550 km. http://carbonartwindsurf.com/News/CA-Rider-Breaks-World-Record

I remember seeing a Frenchman (?) try and do a trans Atlantic (?) Pacific many years back, maybe 80's, with a highly modified "board" that he could get into to sleep. I seem to remember it being around 20ft. In the mid 80's there were some transatlantic windsurfer races too, but they were team events with shadow vessels.


Steve

 

Mosiquito Magnet shared spot page

 

note: the watertribe tracking page is DOWN!

The guys over at trackleaders.com were good enough to get what shared spot pages I can get onto their group tracking system on such short notice. They will build a dedicated group page for the Ultimate Florida Challenge in short time and the link will change. Presently I got three up and one more submitted. still working on the remaining ..... got to somehow get it from chief or who ever .....

http://trackleaders.com/general

note: at the bottom of each competitors page you'll see distance and avg speed, cool.

 

ct249,
If another tries it I'll be one of the loudest fans cheering them on! Of course it will have to be from my own boat as I'll be competing the next couple of years, first the ec then the ufc. I'll go and check out those links you provided.