Small to Sail Boat Plans

GF 42 TRIMARAN

One of the most improbable projects around designed by a trendy Architect Greg Lynn that normally designs anything but boats in association with Courouble Design, a California Naval design firm, without experience in multihulls and with a short experience in fast monohulls.

I would not have looked at it twice if I had not looked at the guys that are behind them: HDS the French specialists in structural analysis, calculation and design....http://www.hds-design.com/

So what does Lynn after all?: the conceptual project. I tried to find information about that but without success, I mean the boat program. I found something but it is in Latin! No kidding, here: http://www.couroubledesign.com/?works=gf42-3

The shapes seem interesting if it will sail well or not it will be a bit as a mystery as its use. That's a racing boat? a performance cruising boat? One thing is certain I am curious about it and about its sailing potential. The boat is already on the water and it should not take long to know how it sails. Here's a video with the boat being towed.

DSC 6369 from Greg Lynn FORM on Vimeo.

BARCELONA WORLD RACE: GREAT NEWS

And the good news is that we have a race not between two boats, as I feared, but between 4 boats. Surprisingly, at least for me, besides Stamm/Le Cam, Alex/Ribes there are two more competitive boats and teams. Not only Altadill/Munõz but Corbella/Marín are among the first. Corbella/Marín are leading at this moment. A Race that risked to be boring has been a very interesting one.

Also bad news, it seems to me that the boat of Riechers/Audigane is not able to follow the leading group. They spent a lot of money and time trying to make it a competitive boat for the next Vendee Globe but it does not seem that they have managed.

A very nice movie about last edition and the crews on this one.

For following the race, a tracker with good weather information:
http://www.barcelonaworldrace.org/en/race-live/barcelona-world-race-2014-15-tracker

Our First Sail!

After launching, we motored for a few days just to get a feel for the boat and how a monohull moves compared to the large catamarans we are used to.

All that motoring quickly pointed out that we had a serious leak in the transmission - we were leaking about a quart of oil per mile! We headed back to Nanny Cay to anchor and borrow the chain hoist so that Sasha and I could wrestle transmission out of place and fix it. Come to find out, the shaft was corroded and pitted badly enough that it was not making a good seal. Sasha slipped on a speedy sleeve (a thin metal cylinder that fits tightly over the shaft and provides a brand new smooth surface) and we were back in business.

We motor sailed all the way to St. Thomas without a drip from the transmission!

Watch a video of our motor sail here.

Lost Our Dinghy!

Almost a week ago we lost our dinghy! We were motor sailing from Tortola to St. Thomas when all of a sudden Sasha called to me "Oh no, the dinghy's gone!". We turned around and spent 4+ hours looking for it. We sailed back to Nanny Cay, all the while factoring the wind and current to try and figure out how fast and what direction the dinghy might be floating along. We stopped and talked to local fishermen hoping they might have seen it. We put out calls on the radio to let everyone know that it was floating out there. We called the Coast Guard, St John National Parks, friends on every island to ask them to keep an eye out. No sign of the dinghy yet.

How did we lost the dinghy??

The tow line snapped and neither of us noticed.

Below is the tow line, and the bright yellow bit is where it broke.

After four days of using borrowed paddle boards to get around (with groceries and laundry) and still no word on our missing dinghy we decided to look around for a new dinghy and we found a boston whaler priced to sell.

The whaler was on her trailer on Water Island so we spent two days scraping and painting the bottom and waxing the topsides before we slipped her in the water this morning.

A sneak peak at the interior. More photos to come.

THE NOMINATED BOATS FOR THE 2015 EUROPEAN YACHT OF THE YEAR

Contrary to the magazines boat's of the year this contest is more relevant: It is not only the testers of a magazine that chose the boat but testers from 10 European leading sailing magazines (one for each country). All boats are tested on the water in two rounds, the last one after being selected the finalists on each category.

This year there will be two alterations: Multihulls will not be in a special class but competing with monohulls in the different classes and a new class is introduced : Bluewater Boats. Regarding this last one, and taking into consideration the boats selected, it would seem to me more appropriated to call them Voyage Boats (that's the way the selected boats are called in Europe) but as the term is not used in the US, probably they went for a more dubious qualification. It would create some confusion since on the class of Luxury yachts there is also boats adapted to blue water sailing.

The Nominated boats:

Family cruiser: