Winter events

[simon_jones]

Congratulations on your 4th place Pete, it must have been bloody freezing. Well done just for sailing!

[phil_kirk]

Much respect Pete and well done.  There are a few photos on yachts and yachting.

I think the no. of entries and finishers indicates the effect of the conditions. 61 starters and only 39 finishers.

Pete texted to say he'd finshed 4th having had 8 swims.  Did you spray the hull with WD40 or something? . I really hope the ice bimbling worked. 

Thoughts that come to mind are: could you have won without the swims? ,  If You were swimming that much the rest of us would have ended as ice bergs!

I hope the conditions improve a bit for next weekend. Sarah and I are making our pilgramage to Victoria dock again for the London Boat Show pursuit race.

[peter_barton]

could you have won without the swims?

Erm, sadly, YES.  
But that is the nature of the beast.  Taking a 2005 Cherub out in a gusty 25k of 'heavy air' was likely to require calling on our sense of humour sooner or later.

[john_hamilton]

im intrigued to know what "ice-bimbling" involves!

[peter_barton]

I would like a nice warm 16 knots please.

I will keep my big mouth shut next time. We did get the 16k, but with frequent vicous shifty 25k gusts!

[peter_barton]

Ice bimbles - CODE WHITE alert

Picking up my boat last Thurs in snow and midday sub zero temps, with no let up in the forecast the severity of our conquest dawned on me. We had had big problems keeping the boat going with ice forming last year in light winds. This year with similar temps but stronger wind and therefore more chill, the ice problem was likely to be bigger with us also having less spare hands to deal with it. I momentarily contemplated quitting but decided it would be more fun to try to up our game instead (plus I think I had managed to psych Ben to the point of no return!).

The conditions were going to take out a lot of the competition for various reasons which would open up opportunities for is if we could keep ourselves in the game. Its a renowned tough event. A win is a win. Valid even if it is only because you are the last men standing, perhaps more so.

A quick call to Pete Conway who won the BM in the 70's, in the days of real winters, gave some moral support. He won in a Moth spending the race looking at his cockpit drains, timing the rate at which they were slowly freezing up. Pete is in his late 70s and took line honours in his Asy Int Canoe in the snow at Lym today.

The CODE WHITE mission was conceived.

1) Spray covers over kicker & T-foil cleats. Last year with ice forming they became fairly unusable quite early. With heavy duty plastic (DPC membrane) and duct tape we kept spray and wind chill off the cleats .

[peter_barton]

Ice bimbles cont...

2) Last year just sailing out to the start a film of ice formed on the racks. This year I added extra mid rack foot loops and ridged 'footstops' of pro grip to racks & gunwales (2cm wide, 3 thick = 6mm)

[peter_barton]

3) Spray deflector for jib track. Last year it froze up and often Roz had to kick the jib across and it led to a capsize 40m from finish. This year heavy duty plastic (DPC membrane) duct taped to foredeck and angled forwards deflecting spray & wind chill to keep track ice clear.

[peter_barton]

Ice bimbles cont....
4) Extra secondary spinnaker haly cleat at mast base. Last year towards the end of the race after 7m of wet rope was hoisted thru it it became a block of ice and would not cleat which is a bit of a show stopper. So I attached this 'emergency' cleat just off the direct line for manual use, just in case.

5) Have you tried to buy salt in the last few days? Near impossible! We prepared a bucket of very, very salty water and soaked spin haly, kite, main, jib sheets before launching. We took salt out with us with a hope of a quick sprinkle at 2min to go but we were preoccupied.

6) We took de-icer sailing with us. As it turned out it was too full on to fully spare one of us for spraying but I did manage a cheeky spray of the stbd trap kit whilst 1 wiring downwind.

Were these efforts successful? Yes, definitely. Some other boats had problems and we didn't on any of this. The mods probably cost 1kg total, no big deal.

The one place I missed was the trapeze kit. I had a spate of precariously dropping to the knots on port. Ice forms on the string due to wind chill and goes into the cleat. Next time I would maybe cover them in bike tyre inners with just the cleat jaws showing.

So the ice didn't get us a but ultimately the 25k gusts did. Our Cherub handling was not up to it and swims led to more swims. But if it had been a more managable 14-16k our preperations meant we were there ready to be counted. We gave it a keen shot and are very happy with our achievement. As far as big days out go it beat drinking Guinness at the boat show and was possibly cheaper and better for me. Next year...

[neal_gibson]

I think you had it lucky pete being on the shore for a lot longer than us.
by the time you passed us on that quite tight leg our entire boom was frozen the pole jaws were frozen,
and every tack lashed ice into our faces.

but we kept going we ended up being on the water 3 hours in total. took a lot of hot water to de rig the boat in the end. but it was worth it.

[roland_trim]

Well done Pete. Thanks for the write-up.

[phil_kirk]

very interesting Pete,

I recall last year the ice was due more to freezing fog.  This year it would have been more due to spray.  last year we found that everything above deck level on the ent froze up but the control line cleats being below deck level were ok.  The Jib cleats coped but that didn'y make any difference because all the ropes were frozen.  A bucket of very salty water is a good idea as was the mobile de-icer.   

Again hats off to a plucky effort and a good finish.

[Will_Lee]

You are made of v stern stuff! Ultramax respect.

I stayed in bed all day - warming up after a week away teaching in Norway. Psychiatric epidemiology in the snow for anyone?!

[Graham Bridle]

Ditto... and thats more bimbling than I do in a season....

[john_hamilton]

same here, but that is hopefully soon to change, will, sorry i havent contacted you, i have not been in contact with anyone for a week due to the absurdly high call charges from mainland europe.