Summer Photos

Ok, I'm ready for summer again! While I actually enjoy much of winter (get stuff done, no 60 hour weeks, special projects) summer is definitely missed around here. While going through some 88 photos trying to find a shot of how we run our spin gear, I came across some neat photos of the last day of racing.

Here's the gang on the way back in to the harbor. Brian S driving, another Brian S trimming spinnaker, Jocelyn in the pit and Niki on the boom.

63 had another disposable camera that day and snapped this one. Not sure what the flags all aout. Thats us at the ww mark doing... uh, something strange with the jib. That was either to gas 196 or a woops-moment. One of the Brians driving the boat back in. He'd recently returned from sailing around the world and seemed to be a bit bummed to be back on land. Wish we could have gotten him out more, but I think he had a good time.

Behold the girls of Peanut:

Me and another Brian. He's a great trimmer, and in case of emergency I'm going to ask him to be my stunt double.
There was NOT a lot of wind that day. Still beats snow tho.

New Mast Under Way

Since our old mast was damaged (we had a not-so-smart day on the water) we're getting a new one through Cape Cod Shipbuilding. In addition to making the new boats (same way as 40 years ago!) they're also the sole supplier of Shields masts.

Wendy at Cape Cod has been really helpful to us as we've gone through the Shields restoration process, and I was glad that we finally had an order to justify all her time! She was also kind enough to send some neat photos of the mast being built.

Here you see the bottom couple feet of the mast. The exit blocks are for the below deck exits for the halyards, and the ring further up the mast is the boom vang bail. We were going to go with a more-modern spectra strap for the vang, but the bail suits me better since I can lead lines down either side of it to make it below deck
Took me a second or 2 to figure out that this was the masthead. The cutout is for the main halyard exit box, which I think is a Schaefer 34-35. You can see the welds that hold the tapered tip of the mast together. The taper is formed by cutting the mast on both sides, in a curved wedge (thicker at top, thinner at bottom) The front and back of the mast are pushed back together, and then welded.

After it's all wedled together,they clean up the welds and voila! Taper.
More updates as they come, and we'll be doing our superboom soon, in the new CYR shop!

Shields Fleet 3 Yard Day: Mast step mesurements

A bunch of Shields sailors met up this morning at the yard. We were going to measure our steps, look over the boats, and develop some winter project lists. I was also happy just to be around the boats again, which is a sure sign that I miss summer!

We measured boats with the owners present, and had at least 3 people on board from different boats to verify the measurements. We didn't really need this, but it's also a good excuse to hang out with sailing friends!

All the boats are legal, and no one was significantly disadvantaged in step postion. 88 was definitely the closest to max legal rake, with the other end of the spectrum having the mast step about an inch away from max. It should be noted that the boat with the most rake is about as fast as the boat with the least, and they were both top 3 for the season.

88
Partners at max aft
bury 34.5
y 134.75
max x 140.260
actual x 140.25
delta: -.01 (!)

67
partners approx 1/4" fwd of max aft
bury 35.75
y 135.375
max x 141.58
actual x 141.275
delta -.205

45
partners at max aft
bury 34.875
y 135.375
max x 141.13
actual x 140.250
delta -.88

90
partners at max aft
bury 35.25
y 135.75
max x 141.44
140.5
delta -.94"

150
partners approx 1/4" fwd of max aft
bury 33.5
y 135.5
max x 140.7
actual x 140.5
delta -.2

196
bury 33
y 135.375
max x 140.58
actual x 139.5
delta -1.08

It was fun to get together and talk boat with sailing friends, and hopefully this gets people fired up to work on their boats this winter, and therefore start the 09 season with well prepped boats. We also talked about some issues some of the boats have. 67 and 88 are getting new masts due to damage, and lots of us are making the upgrade to 8:1 finetunes. One repeated theme was cost vs benefit, specifically how much would spending $$ to fix ___ actually get us on the course? In just about every case we all agree that the upgrades would be less beneficial than sailing time! To that end Kevin from 150 is planning on sharing his coaching and practice techniques from his world class dinghy background with us, and we're going to have a practice schedule in place for next year. We're going to work on all the things that make sailors better: starting, manouevering, boatspeed. With our great base of sailors in fleet 3, and some quality time on the water, we can have a team of Chicago boats that can compete with the best at 09 Nationals. With our morning work, and tonights awards dinner, I'm psyched for the season to start!

Mast Step rule update

The Shields class has a rule dictating how much rake the mast can have, and it's based on the relationship between the mast step and the mast partners. I recently asked the measurer for some clarifications on this rule. This was partially to see if I could move our mast step to get more rake, and also to prepare for measuring boats when we host the National Championship here in Chicago next year.

The clarifications I asked for regarded whether we were supposed to use the actual partner location, or the legal max aft possible position, and also if the bury measurement (from the mast step to the top of the deck) included partner boxes, such as the ones that we (and most of our fleet) have.

The answers were kind of surprising to me, but are actually the most literal interpretation of the class rules.

The partner measurement isn't based on the actual location of the partners, it's based on the max legal aft measurement of the partners, which is 135.75" from the bow chock on the Shields. Our partner box is exactly at this spot, so it's not an issue for us, but it does mean that boats with the partners further forward are able to get less rake.

The other surprise was that the bury measurment is from the top surface of the deck, even if the box extends above this by an inch or two. This means that boats with partner boxes have the measured bury lower than the effective bury, again meaning a bit less available rake. I wasn't sure on this in spring, so just to be safe the aft edge of our partner box is raked aft at about the 2 degrees of desired rake. Phew!

I recomputed our numbers based on this, to see if we could move the mast step or not, and definitely not!

Our partners are max aft at 135.75"
Our bury is 34.5 (not 35.5" as I said back in June, since we measure to the deck surface)
Our Y (from aft coaming to parner max aft) is 134.75
Our Max legal X (coaming to mast step) is 140.260
Our actual X is 140.250

While I like to think of myself as a "every last inch" type when setting up a boat, I'm not sure I want to chase down the last .01"! It only translates to a difference of less than a 1/16" of an inch at the masthead, and the possibility of the boat changing shape a bit in the water and making me illegal is definitely not worth it. As my old friend Kevin always says "thats worth 1 bad tack"

We've got our awards dinner coming up in 2 weeks, and that morning a bunch of us are going to meet up and measure the boats in the yard. I really miss sailing Shields, so this is about as close as I can get until spring.

Keel Repair

Bill, who owns a cruising converted Shields out west asked about the status of the keel seam repair I spent so much time (and brain cells) fixing. Since I don't get a lot of requests on here, I'm happy to share the photos.The good news is the keels still on! The first half of the year was quite windy, and we punished the boat a bit racing it. It's a bit funny being out there in the middle of a pretty intense race, wondering how the keels doing. The fiberglass sheathing of the seam worked out great, which is good because I never want to do that particular job again. In the above photo you can see the top of the keel joint looks pretty good (although it still has 36 grit scratches all over it, ugh.) You can also see the front of the keel looks a bit funky. At some point this year we hit something that must have been floating just under water. I tried to wet sand it when diving to smooth it out, which is why the leading edge looks weird. Honestly this looks a lot better out of the water and will take minimal effort to fix.
The second pic is a close up of the keel seam (or lack of) and the rudder fairing strips which also held just fine. You can see the weird blisters on the rudder. No idea what thats all about.
Unfortunately, the _other_ keel seam, where the lead meets the deadwood is still a piece of crap, which is why the joint shows and also leaks. Going to have to fix this one before it gets too cold for epoxy. Yay!

Have some more fun projects on the horizon: the Shields class has legalized a couple things I want to have on 88. Tacktick digital compi are now ok, so we're going to get a Micro compass and throw that on. Also a 8:1 mainsheet fine tune is ok, which is excellent news as the Shields main can be a bit of a bear for most people in breeze. We're considering a couple options for this, such as a super slick system with purchase below deck and led to the sides, but will probably go for the simpler (and lower friction) in boom system. The way I figure it, people can add a really great fine tune to their boats for less than $200. Honestly I've been selling boat stuff for so long that it's unclear whether thats a good value or not.

1 year

pp
Delivered the boat to the yard today, which I suppose officially ends our sailing season. It's been great fun, which justifies all the other stuff (boat work, boat budget)

Our goal with the boat was to fix it up, race it with a top 3 result, and do lots of daysailing. The boat turned out pretty well, we won our season, and we've had a lot of fun taking friends and family out for little cruises. Niki and I just did our yearly sunrise sail, which was pretty great.

Last night we went out drinking with some sailing friends, including a couple people from our crew and also Kevin from 150. Everyones got lots of plans for next year, and it seems that Nationals 09 is already something to think about. While I'd really like to not do anything to the boat, I've got a bunch of things to fix, and even more to improve for next year. Hoping to be a lot more reasonable in terms of project scope this year, and have made myself a temperature limit; no work when it's below freezing!

Mast Rake

While prepping 3 of our fleets boats for a match racing practice, I had the opporunity to observe 3 different boats mast rakes.

The photo is from the side, and all 3 boats are more or less parallel on the docks. from front to back is 88, 45, 150.
It seems like 45 has the least rake, and 150 and 88 have a good bit more.

More rake seems to be a good bit faster, and lots of boats have moved their steps fwd to the maximum class legal limit. I've heard a couple different reasons for the speed advantage; I think it's becuase it moves the center of effort (from the sailplan) aft, giving you more helm earlier, which makes sense it light air. But it also seems like rakier (is that a word?) boats go faster in heavy air as well, which my friend Bam says is due to the more vertical leech. I also think it's because the extra helm lets you flatten and depower the main more, while still keeping the boat tracking upwind. Whatever the cause, rake is good. I'm going to max out our mast step position this winter, although it may mean we have to cut our (really nice!) floorboard up front. Hoping that our local boats will take the time to check/move their mast step position before nationals next year.

Thriling.