MisterMoon

These results pretty much coincide with my experience. I've got lots of GPS data on Bandaloop and find that when I'm sailing well (watching the tell tales very closely and correctly trimmed) that we get around 102 degrees COG between tacks in flat water and 8-10 knots of breeze. I find in really light air the angles increase a degree or two. On the same stretch between East Cape Sable and Flamingo, a couple of hours before Graham went through we averaged 106 degrees COG between tacks. We may have had some tide against us, but I don't know that for sure. Once we got south of FL Bay and upwind into 25 knots between Arsenic Bank and Bowlegys cut, the waves were often 2-3 feet and really short. In the dark in those conditions we only managed 123 degrees between tacks. Bashing into big, square waves that almost stop the boat appears to have a serious negative effect on leeway. Both EC examples are with main and mizzen double reefed and winds 18-25 knots.

LRock and CrazyRussian finished at 0653 this morning, for an all time best time of 17 days 23 hours and 53 minutes. Alan SOS got a few hours sleep at Anclote last night and is currently around 30 miles from finishing. He's making good progress and should finish mid-afternoon, beating the all time solo record by nearly 24 hours. Congratulations to both LR/CR and also to Alan.

Nice report, Graham. We were quite concerned when you did not appear at CP1 within a few minutes of us. Fortunately my partner Will knew Stump Pass and was adamant that we go right across the bar pretty close to the north shore. We hit our highest speed of the trip surfing across, 11 knots. The first day was my first real experience with my new staysail. Like you we tried to tack downwind with it as the wind moved aft, but it was pretty apparent we were getting passed by other boats (including you) who were just soaking down the rhumbline that we dropped it and went wing and wing with the main by the lee straight for our waypoint. We did get another good run with the staysail on Monday Morning between Choko and NW Cape. FWIW, Bandaloop's tacks upwind in the strong conditions we had in FL Bay were ~103-108 degrees measured on my GPS tracks, which is about as good as I ever get.

Yes and it doesn't work below about 6.5 knots. Self bailing is the way to go! I'll install an electric bilge pump before the next EC. Graham's boat is really nice. I'm sure he'll have a report of some of his thoughts when he gets home. Right now he's still sleeping in the boat on the beach in KL. John, Something is amiss with your Andersen bailer in some way. I have used them on every dinghy from a Spindrift 10 to 18 footers for 50 years and they always work unless I have done something wrong. They work going upwind in the Spindrift 10 when wind was high enough to need bailing so the speed could not be all that high. On CS boats, I put them on the other side of the keelson from the CB. On the Spindrift 10 it was behind the DB but it worked anyway. Tom Graham expressed the same thoughts to me at KL on Saturday. I'm going to pull my bailer and see if I can tune it up somehow. Mine is mounted correctly.

Yes and it doesn't work below about 6.5 knots. Self bailing is the way to go! I'll install an electric bilge pump before the next EC. Graham's boat is really nice. I'm sure he'll have a report of some of his thoughts when he gets home. Right now he's still sleeping in the boat on the beach in KL.

We had a really good run this year. Zero was a great team mate. Bandaloop held up well with no major issues. It was great to finally meet Graham and spend some time talking to him today after he arrived. He did sleep out in FL bay a couple of nights and I envied his accommodations! Couple of things we learned: -surfing across the bar at Stump is the fastest and safest way. Roo and the Sea Pearl who rolled his boat had just passed us as we all approached Stump together. We took the inside, surfing across the bar, Roo was in the middle and the SP tried to out around the marker. We blew in Stump in no time with no drama and passed both other boats. I think we were well inside before the SP rolled and Roo had his little incident there. We pulled out of CP after about an hour stopped wondering what happened to Roo. - Missing the tide gate at Choko is bad. We got to Indian Key Pass with an outgoing tide and foul wind on Sunday afternoon. It took us several exhausting hours of tacking and rowing to make the five miles into Chokoloskee Bay to arrive just in time trudge through the mud. We knew we weren't going back out until an ebb tide so we set our alarm for about 4 hours of sleep and went to bed after eating some freeze-dried. We awoke to find the boat high and dry where the tide had deposited it after the high tide. Inflated the rollers and got into the water and played video-game sailing navigating out of Chokoloskee Pass by GPS, mostly under oars. - Screws landing on the deck are bad. My mast track has few rivets in high stress areas but is mostly held on by sheet metal screws installed by the original/owner builder. We were about 4-5 miles from Northwest Cape when a screw bounced off the deck and we realized the mizzen sail track was pulling out. Made it middle cape, pulled the mast and repaired it with some larger screws No further problems. - Conditions change. After fixing the mast, we got to Middle Cape and could not get around it due to the high winds and wicked tide ripping around the point. We tacked out a bit and came back pretty close to where we started. At that point we beached and figured we were probably not going to make it. We pitched tent where there were no saltwater croc tracks and slept 11 hours. The next morning realized we were mentally impaired after two days on the boat working hard and of course the conditions would change. The tide had changed, the wind was lighter. The boat was beached high above the water again and we inflated the rollers and did our third beach launch of the race. Sailed under full sail to East Cape, the double reefed for the bash to Flamingo directly upwind in 18-20 knots. Big washing machine off East Cape and a hard slog most of the way to Flamingo. The last night was the hardest sailing either us had ever done, and Zero is VERY experienced. Big winds, big gusts, nasty nasty nasty chop with big amplitude, short wavelength. Wet, very wet and we often could not bail at all because the crew had to be far to windward to keep the boat upright. I was thinking at the time that I'd be scared if I wasn't so busy. We were very happy with our boat and our result. We were the 10th boat overall in the EC out of ~100 entries, fourth Class 4 boat overall, and third in the double male class. Looking forward to next year. Unfortunately ZeroTheHero isn't available next year or the year after as he's committed to doing the EC with his wife for 2017 and his son for 2018 and I'll need to find the a new team mate. Also, Alan's boat is stupid fast. The first night after leaving CP one, he snuck up on our transom to within about 15 feet before we noticed him. He sheeted out with his boom nearly over the bow while we chatted a few moments, easily keeping pace with us. When he sheeted in, he was off like a rocket and we never saw him again until we arrive to find him asleep on the Murphy bed at the finish line.

Bandaloop will be there in all her grotty glory. (We're about three years past needing a full repaint.) But she's ready and I think so are we. You can track yours truly and my partner this year ZeroTheHero on the WT site as MisterMoon. This will be the fourth time we've pushed her off the beach at Ft. Desoto. Looking forward to finally meeting Graham. If the WT tracker craps out, you can follow us at http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0zD4bncx1bo6uYNrSK80WDHYhTaZfJHsE If anyone has top secret tips about how to get to KL ahead of all the other class 4 boats, please post them here.

You should also try to list it on the WaterTribe site. http://watertribe.org/forums/forum/stuff-for-sale Your best bet at the EC is to be there starting Friday morning March 4. Being at the start on Saturday morning probably won't help you. Last year there was a guy set up at the exit of the parking lot with a Dovekie he was trying to sell. Don't know if he got it sold, but he got a lot of lookers including me.

Sounds scammy to me. A real broker gets paid from the proceeds of the sale only after he sells the item. No one can guarantee a sale, and no one legitimate asks for money up front. Looked them up. Many complaints on BBB and scam alert websites.

Mine are on the deck because my cockpit coaming isn't very high. Your way works better.

I'm using these as you describe on my boat. The work, but you have to be careful, especially when the dodger is removed. They have the potential to puncture the crap out of bare feet, so be careful. Also I will not fly my mizzen staysail without the dodger installed because of the snag and tear potential. (For this reason I removed the cleats from this area as well.)

Now that I've got some Shocks, I'll be using them again. They are very slippery with the Sta-set dacron line I used exclusively. They would work very well in place of the micro blocks at the base of the mainmast on my CS-17. I may also replace the cheek blocks on the sprits for the snotters with Shocks.

My mizzen is rigged exactly the same as Thrillsbe's sketch except I don't have anything catching the sheet in the middle of the sprit. It's never really a problem anyway. Also, in practice there isn't all that much tension pulling down on the block on the sprit. I could move it to the mast but that makes rigging at the ramp a little slower, so I leave it where it is. I would not change the double ended mainsheets, however.

Lennie, If I were you I'd drag your boat up to Ft. Desoto on Friday, March 4 to display while everyone is setting up for the Everglades Challenge. Lots of potential buyers among people who the race and also the folks who are thinking about doing the race someday. I see Graham has signed up to do the race himself this year. If you do come, look me up. I'm the guy in the really grotty looking CS-17.

I just ordered a pair of Ronstan Shocks to use in place of the blocks you've got mounted to your rub rails. I'll attach them to the side deck with a rope strop. I'll report how well they work in a few weeks. At ~$15/pair delivered, it's an inexpensive experiment. http://www.ronstan.us/marine5/shocks.asp

I've got a new staysail for Bandaloop and it really powers up the boat in light airs. I've got some questions on best practices for rigging. Right now I've got the sail sheeted to a block attached to end of the mizzen boom by a ~6-8" strop. The question I have is what do you do with the end of the sheet. In my handful of test sails, I've experimented with leading the sheet forward and around the mast back to my hand and also directly from the end of the boom to my hand. Pulling directly tends to also sheet in the mizzen at the same time which seems undesirable. Going around the mast gives a better sheeting angle, but is a bit of a tangle at times. Since I use the staysail only for long passages on events like the EC and FL120, it would be nice to be able to cleat it as well. Also, I think B&B recommends cleating the halyard to the coaming to help stay the mast. What is the best way to do this. Also, what do you do with the halyard when the staysail isn't flying?

This whole discussion comes from sailing on sloop rigged OPBs. On a cat ketch, I'm visualizing the mizzen as the main on a sloop and the main as the genoa. But that may not be a valid comparison... Pulling the boom to centerline on many sloops while not over tensioning the sheet really adds to the pointing ability. Barber haulers on the jib help a lot as well. It would be a rope traveler over the top of the tiller. I'd put fairleads on the corners of the transom leading to cam cleats on the inside coaming.

Has anyone ever tried a traveler on the mizzen sheet on a CS-17 that would allow sheeting closer to centerline without over tightening the luff and possibly give a few more degrees point when going upwind. Note my mizzen sheet is not to plan. It runs as follows: The sheet is tied off to a becket block on the end of the sprit boom. It goes down to a block on a rope horse, centered right above the tiller. From there it goes back up to the becket block on the boom end, up the boom to a turning block at the mast and down the mast to a turning block and cam cleat on the thwart. I find I can nearly sheet the mizzen on center with this set up, but the leech is so tight the boat will not sail to windward very well at all. Going hard to windward, the end of the mizzen boom is usually just inside the corner of the transom. My hope in making a rope traveler across the transom would be to allow the boom to be closer to centerline without completely closing the top of the mizzen and make it gain a few more degrees to windward. Based on GPS tracks, I normally tack through about 105 degrees. Just picking up 3-4 degrees with no loss in speed would be huge.

My admittedly awful looking dodger is very useful for sailing with a crew on long, wet passages. It keeps them out of most of the spray when things start getting sporty and allows the to sleep without being continually dowsed by cold water. It also helps when sailing solo to keep water out of the boat on those splashy upwind legs.

I don't like having the motor on the transom because it was always fouling the mizzen sheets. On Bandaloop, the motor lives on the port side on an adjustable bracket. I mostly steer with the rudder under power, so having the motor tiller on the wrong side isn't an issue. Having it on the port side also makes the F-N-R shift lever more accessible. The transom isn't strong enough to trailer the motor on the bracket, so I always remove the outboard and put it on the back of my car.

I spent some time on the phone with Carla yesterday and it's making me want to come. But that 12 hour drive, oh my! We'll see....

Agreed. the next step is a mock-up. If it doesn't work, then I'll just build a better dodger than the one I've got and keep going. Anything I do to the boat has to conform to following list: - doesn't make the boat less safe - Allows crew to lounge comfortably forward of the mizzen. - Allows rowing from forward of the mizzen. - Gives enough space to sleep one in great comfort and two in a pinch. - is dry enough to let me bring my guitar on cruises.

Unless you use your boat for a lot of overnight cruises, there's no need to put a cabin on your boat. The only reason I'm thinking about doing mine is I pretty much only use my boat on multi-day trips. Daysailing is not as attractive to me right now, at least as long as I live in this windless hole.

Thanks, I'd wondered what you did to the inside to make it work. I'm hoping I don't have to cut into the forward bulkhead to get enough space. How far down did you cut the port side seat?

Because I don't want a Birdwatcher. I do think some of Bolger's ideas are good though. Doug's 20 mk3 has a very nice Birdwatcher slot-top cabin, for instance.