Super Sunday

Things starting to come together now, went out last Sunday in almost no breeze, managed to to 6 knots upwind in 4 knots breeze using the code 0 and the newly reshaped (now lovely) mainsail.  

Also got the A3 set up with the new KZ furling cable, looks great and works beautifully,  need to cross the wind farm on the way back from the Brothers, in a 25+ northerly, to test this properly though.

The wind built and we saw low-20s knots just as we came back in.  Before that we hit 18 knots of boat speed with Vesna driving (low 20s breeze at the time).  18 knots would have been white-knuckle territory on our previous ride, but Blink was just cruising along comfortably at this speed, no stress.  So there's lots more to come.  When we have reefs available and big-wind sails ready to go we'll head out and push it a bit harder....

Mixed Bag ...

A bit of an update …. some good and some bad news...

Good news:

 -  mainsail arrived back - recut for new mast shape - from Norths in Auckland today.  Should  be much better now.  And the reef points should be there too.  

 - in the bag with the main was the furling cable from KZ for the A3, looks like a very nice bit of gear.  This will be useable very soon, maybe Sunday. 

 -  I made inhaulers today, so now we can sheet the jib inboard for upwind.  

 -  deck fitting for inner forestay went on today

 - Gordie got the mast seal on today, so we won't have a lake in the cabin sole every time it rains now.

Bad news: 

 - we don't have an inner forestay yet 

 - forecast for planned first race tomorrow 30+ gusting 40, we're not up to this yet, and it's likely to be cancelled anyway.  And in Wellington at this time of year, these forecasts aren't wrong very often.  

 - battery management system did something odd again this afternoon.  Not a major but clearly not working like it's supposed to.  

 - we found nearly 3 litres of hydraulic fund under the starboard ram, so something is leaking (so that's where it's all gone!).  I'll be down there tomorrow trying to find out why, probably just a loose fitting

Mast has been re-tuned

After Gordie and Matt sorted out our mast bend and rake, we went out for a quick bit of yachting to see how that mainsail looked (summary: not quite right yet)

Daryl W of Camper / Volvo Ocean Race fame joined us for a jaunt around the harbour.  He refrained from commenting on the quality of the foredeck work done by the chap who is usually the driver.  Which was polite.

And, there is an article about Blink in the current Seahorse magazine

PS I'm including this from Joerg again, 'cos it's rather good:

Sail #3

We had our A2 back so headed out in a dying southerly last Sunday.  Mike couldn't sail with us but could escape from work to take some pics from the shore... these are my favourites, more to come.

This is the A6,  unfortunately just before this the breeze dropped out here ...

And this is the freshly returned A2, again not much breeze in close to the shore but we're still moving.

And a shot heading upwind.  Mainsail too deep, will be better (?enough) after mid-mast prebend increased to designer specs, it's a bit straight at the moment and there might also be a bit too much material in the luff, we'll see.

And some video from Joerg ... (this is worth watching full-screen)

Progress

We're still waiting for our new battery controller, but had decided that we could get on with some more stuff in the meantime.  The last few days saw the relocation of the keel proximity switches, and measurement of the string pot values for the full cant range and centre.  And many small tweaks to instruments, calibrations, etc.

So no more sailing yet.  The string pot will now travel back to Auckland to have the accurate values put in, should only take a few days (during which the weather here looks like it wouldn't really allow much sailing anyway), hopefully will be back and working by the end of the week.  We won't get all of this set up properly until Bob comes back to Wellington, which is determined by when the BMS arrives, which we thought was going to be last week.

In the meantime, some video clips from last Saturday's all too brief and limited sail with the A6

Sail #2

Things are moving slowly, lots to set up.  So not much sailing at moment, this is the first time in 10 days and no more sailing for a while until more stuff is sorted...

The Lithionics battery guys are holding us up a bit, much of the electrics including PLC commissioning still awaiting a BMS (battery management system) box to arrive the from USA before they can be completed.  So we are still sending 1-2 people down to manually cant the keel. With the solution to our Lithionics battery problems taking a while to come from the US, we can't charge the battery bank except from shore, pretty much eliminating electric keel canting.

Our mast needs a bit of a re-tune for some more rake and bend.

But last Saturday, 10 days after sail #1 in almost no breeze, we went out for a bit of yachting.  This time a cool 13-15 knot southerly, we saw 20 TWS for a few moments.   Upwind with a main that was roughly half backwinded, and jibs not sheeted close in (rig tune is out and don't have the inhaulers set up either yet), we were sitting on just over 8 knots.  Reasonable, but I suspect not close to as high or as fast as the boat is capable of.  Our only useable kite (apart from the Code 0) was the A6.  The A6 looks great and will be a weapon on strong breeze but it's not quite the horsepower that you'd want in this sort of boat for ripping downwind in 15 knots..  having said that, we did average about 13-14 knots off the wind most of the time (at fairly hot angles) and peaked at 18 knots through the water in 20 TWS.

Thanks Mike for taking most of the pics ...