What does your Rigging weigh?

Today Greg and I spent the day giving our much neglected Super Taipan some love.

Some of you will have seen the boat before and a lot of people around the world know of it, but for those that don't: We took a set of Taipan 5.7 hulls and mutated them into a 10ft wide carbon masted weapon.

We have some really trick parts on the such as Marstrom M20 rudders and carbon rudder gudgeons that Greg made one winter...

Aside from the usual jobs like replacing ropes and blocks, we went a little radical.... I hate wires so we replaced the sidestays and forestay with rope! There have been some big developments in rope technology over the past couple of years and now its feasible to use rope in the same diameter in place of wire.

DSK78 is same for same with wire in terms of strength and creep so we made up a set as you can see in the pics above. We weighed the original rigging and it came in at dead on 2kg, the new stuff??? well as you can see in the photo its just over 200grams and thats complete with lashing for the bottom and all fittings! So a 10:1 ratio for weight saving is a big deal particularly when you consider it's up the rig too.

We test it on Sunday so maybe I have an funny story to tell come Monday...

Corporate days...

Usually the mention of a corporate day is enough to send most of us competitive sailors to sleep, But what if it was on an X40?

For the past 2 years we have done a lot of corporate sailing for Volvo Trucks Benelux, They supply a truck for the Tornado Sport team, currently carrying around Holmatro and Ecover teams in an enclosed F1 style truck (more on this later)

This year we ran two boats and even threw in some match racing, getting the guests involved in the crew work was a blast! Big trucking type dudes hoisting the kite while we yell at them to go faster...

Unique to the X40 is the ability to get everyone driving the boat, its really rewarding to see the reaction on each face as they discover the skills to keep the boat at the right angle, I even had to learn a little dutch to make it easier to communicate with the guests. I keep it simple Push and Pull (Duwen and Trekken) and they work it out really fast!

The margin for error is a lot less on the downwinds so I usually steer then but the rst of the time we let the guests drive upwind and they all love it. I have never seen another corporate experience that gets such a positive reaction.

Maybe there is a business case here??

Hey all!

Ok, so after too many requests and too much time passing.... I have started this little blog.

I am pretty slack at keeping up with family and friends as well as the general sailing scene so this is my attempt to stay in touch.

I will be posting stories and pics when I can from the various travels and regattas I go to, i'm not a natural photo taker but will try to change that to some degree and will always try to get hold of the real pics fom the pro's at events.

My schedule over the next few months is pretty full on:

November 19-25, Red Bull X40 in Hong Kong

November 28-Dec 5, Evolution Racing (TP52) Kings Cup, Phuket

December 8-14 Red Bull X40, Singapore

December 17- Jan 5, Xmas in the cold.... Italy and Amsterdam

January 8-15 Langkawi race week,(TP52) Malaysia

January 25-31 Singapore straits, (TP52)Batam

February 1-7 ?? X40, Oman

So... not much free time there apart from the snowy Xmas which I am really looking forward to as my first one in the northern half of the world.

Hey all!