Flying Fifteen Regatta Parua Bay 2012

[Zane Lewis]

After seeing the IA's which my Dad still talks about sailing I had to write up our Flying Fifteen regatta we had at Parua Bay on the Whangarei harbour. We got 9 boats, 3 from Auckland, 4 local boats and 2 from Waitangi.

4 races Saturday and 3 on Sunday. I did 2 on saturday with my 12 year old son as crew. Pulled out after 2 as he got cold and tired. We did not feel so bad as by this point there where 3 of us on the beach. Winds started with 10-15 and ended 20+.

Sunday dawned with 15 knots and built of 25 by the end of the day so after 3 races we all knew we had had a good weekend.
One interesting thing was the number of boats that suffered damage to gear but where able to make temporary repairs on the water and keep racing. For example we broke our vang shackle onto the boom but where able to make up a tempory lashing.
My Crew on Sunday was the owner of the start finish boat in his 70's.

Now I'm going to attach a series of photos with comments.

Zane

[Zane Lewis]

my son on the helm during the pre start.




my son say's this is a picture of us practising "Planking"




getting tired my this time. also getting to far across and looking for a windshift to bring us back.

[Zane Lewis]

guy's 70 + can still plank


how not to get you kite down. one of my 2 bad drops, also went trawling with it on one occasion.


a nice clean cockpit
note the main outhaul tension, cummingham tension and open leach on the jib


getting some good down hill speed.
Water is getting choppy for our normaly sheltered little bay.


more down hill speed


good start this time.
Note that we are not keeping our crew weight as close together as the Auckland crews infront and behind us.
(They both got away from us)

[Zane Lewis]

working it up to the finish

[Zane Lewis]

Some pics of other guy's as well.


yes even the best guy's can get cuaght out. they had just pulled a great overtaking comming down the inside and throwing
in a quick jib to get the inside run to the mark when it went to custard.



one of the very nice early NZ FF's. This one has been beautifully restored and they are working towards taking it to the
next years worlds in Hong Kong.

Same boat again!


looking towards our ramp with one of our local boats. This is the first race for this crew in a new to them boat.


a good learning photo. Lots of mods to make to sail trim for next time can be seen in this pic.
Main still too full, Jig leach too tight. FF's with the long low jib choke the mains easily in this sort of weather.


Well done if you make it through this lot of photo's

Thanks
Zane

[sailboy3]

What a blast! Great pics!

[Hwyl]

Great pictures,Uffa certainly got that one right.

Looks like you need to play the vang more,is it high powered and readily accessible? Is your traveller on the transom adjustable

[Phil Y]

Looks fun-I do like FF's

[Chip-skiff]

Brilliant pics- a thousand thanks.

Looks as if you had plenty of wind and some of those boats are planing nicely. One doesn't think of keelers as planing hulls, but the F15s seem to do it quite naturally.

There's a small fleet of F15s at the Charteris Bay YC on Lyttelton Harbour, where we kept our boat. I loved watching them race. We'd sail our wee tub over to Quail Island and have a picnic, or look on from our house, which was on top of the cliffs north of there.

[John B]

excellent stuff Zane.. No prangs?

[Zane Lewis]

No prangs this time. One boat did get too close to the rocks leaving the wharf but no damage was done.

Good comment re the vang. I think that was possiblely talken after we had blown the shackle on the boom and had replaced it with a bit of 3mm Spretra or similar.
This was my first time out in a new to me boat as well and I learnt lots. Need to look at using more vang. We have heaps of power in the vang. I had been more worried about a lack of power in the rig tension system but in these conditions FF standard practice is to back the rig tension off.
early Gold division, Silvers and Classic's tend to use 250- 400 lb rig tension. New golds run up to 450 lb and some of the carbon reinforced ones apparently get up to 550 lb.
My understanding is something along the lines of 300 in light conditions, 350 in moderate and 250 in high winds.

Even with this range some top crew's in new boats max out at 350 lb and set the rig and sails to suit while others run as much as they can get.

Most FF's don't use a traveler as such and either use a twin tail 1:1 mainsheet or like me a 2:1 with the rear pulley fixed to the centre line as high as possible and then either 1:1 or 2:1 on the centre boom down to a ratchet block. Hence they need lots of vang. So I think I need to use more and remember to dump some off as we go round the top mark.

looking at the Pic's, a lot of them look very full in the main.
The other thing I need to work on is mast bend. My boat has chocks at deck level with some later boats having a mast ram to pull or push prebend.
Pull 3/8"-1/2" foward in the light, push 3/8"-1/2" back in moderate and netural in heavy.
I need to mark up the neutral point. Ideally I want to fit a ram at some stage.

Zane

[Zane Lewis]

these newer boats have really cool spinacker launching systems.
The crew gets the kits sheets and pole sorted coming up to the top mark then once around the
mark they grap the whole kit and throw it forward.
At the same time the skipper graps the handle on the halyard pump system and in 2-3 pumps it
at full hoist in about 3 seconds
The halyard tail is connected to a bungey cord system that takes up the slack after each time you
pull on the pump handle.

[Zane Lewis]

Re How fast does a FF go.

We can get around a windward leeward course as fast or faster than an Eliot 5.9. FF are faster up wind but have a much smaller kite.
Keel weight 181 +-12 kg. Hull weight 138 kg with gear.. Boat weight min 307kg

I've had my older hull sailing on my own 1 up to 12 knots by gps in flat water on a reach (no kite).
14 knots is considered a speed that is commonly achived.

Recomended crew wieght range is 18-28 st 145 - 185 kg

[CapnJ2ds]

Wonderful! Another class that deserves preservation.

[Zane Lewis]

I agree CapnJ2ds as i own a couple at the moment. (Trying to sell one)

They suit me. I like the idea of something small enough that you don't need a lot of money or crew to have competitive racing,
They get large fleets of 100 plus to the worlds. more than any other keel boat and have good fleets around the world (except North America)

I used to sail Lasers but got sick of the hard work to windward and the interesting handling characteristics they have down hill.
So I went to a trapeze boat which I loved sailing. However as I got a little older I found that the pressure the harness puts on my
dodgy hip means I could not sleep the following night after a day racing.
Adding that I also wanted to take my kids and the odd friend out so it can't be too sensitive to inept crew..

But I still wanted the speed and feel of a dinghy.

Zane

[bamamick]

Well, you knew people were going to ask questions, didn't you?

Do those boats have an adjustable bridle like a Snipe or a Lighting (or a Laser)? Looks like it from the photos. Gotta sit on top of each other upwind and you gotta get flat. Powering up and depowering with the vang is not something I have a lot of experience with upwind except in a class called the Windmill, and I didn't do it a lot in those, so I can't be of much help there. You just have to play with it, I guess.

What a great boat and some wonderful photos. Thanks, Zane. I really enjoyed this thread.

Mickey Lake

[gavinpascoe]

Mae me want to pull out my set of FF plans...

[Zane Lewis]

Hi Gavin,
Don't recommend building one these days as it won't be compeditive and will have little resale valve. For racing prepossess the hull shape has been refined down to something that stretches the armature builder.
What I would love to see is restoration of some of the early wooden hulls. They can be made compeditive within the classic division of the class. Add more up to date running rigging systems, sails and rig and you have a great boat. A very cheap entry point to compeditive 1design racing.
Zane

[Zane Lewis]

What I forgot to say was that FF's are classified by age into 3 divisions hence a new build would be classified as a gold fleet even if the hull shape is more classical.

[gavinpascoe]

Cheers Zane. Good tip!