SAIL.SailMagazine

I got my spider-wire in the mail today. That's the name we've given this stuff. This length of 5mm Dynex Dux along with the deadeyes and pelican hooks will become double lifelines for the boat.

Over the weekend I had a chance to watch Maidentrip, the new documentary film about Laura Dekker, after Jillian Schlesinger e-mailed me a private Vimeo link on Saturday. This is Schlesinger's directorial debut--her "maidenfilm," if you will--and whatever Laura might think of it, I thought it was pretty damn good.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 26, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

ETNZ's Rod Davis tells it like it is when it comes to the game of spying and misinformation. Or does he? 

Either way, it's fun to read:

Last year when we were finalizing our foiling on our scaled down 72 boats Oracle was sniffing around and being a general pain in the backside.

We definitely did not want them to know that we had figured out how to “fly” at that point, but we needed to test so we had to sail.

The boat with the flying (foiling) package appeared to break down, slowly being towed home. The other boat, with lots of interest from the shadowing chase boat, started sailing in the other direction, to draw the Oracle flies away.

Once separated, the boat with the foils could do their thing, without the spies knowing. The mistake Oracle made was not checking who was going with which boat … had they done that they might have seen through the smoke screen.

There's more, about secret masts, superlight booms, and reading other teams' notice boards. And there is no question that teams are still at it.

Sort of bad news on the engine today. Good news if you look at it another way. So yesterday when I was messing around with the tachometer I started up the engine while the engine compartment was open. I noticed a noise and traced it to a loose bolt on an engine mount that was allowing one of the engine lift hooks to vibrate. So I noted that, continued with some other work, and then went back to it today.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 25, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

D'oh. Again? These guys are getting good at cutting loose a felled mast:

More here.

Tourist visas for Mexico are good for six months. Ali and I need them, our Mexican children do not. There is an alternative, the FM-3, but it’s time consuming and by most accounts ends up being rather expensive.

When your six months are up you take yourself up and over the border, turn around, and come right back in to start the clock anew. There is an alternative for this as well. The alternative is to meet a tall guy, with glasses, named Julio, at McDonalds, at ten o’clock.

Ali: “We’re meeting who? Where?”

Me: “It’ll be fine I’m sure.”

All right, so that thinga-ma-bob was indeed a tachometer sending unit. When I removed it the brittle sealed wires immediately broke off, so there wasn’t much work to be done in trying to fix it. I’ve seen this thing all along and always just assumed it was an oil pressure gauge or something along those lines, so never gave it much thought. Always figured a tach would have to come off the alternator. Anyway, I’ll order up a new one and hey, who knows, by next season I may actually know what RPMs I’m running at. For now I’m just going to throttle it back a bit.

Stability, fundamentally, is what prevents a boat from being turned over and capsized. Whether you are a cruiser or a racer, it is a desirable characteristic. A boat's shape, particularly its transverse hull form, has an enormous impact on how stable it is. This so-called "form stability" is one of the primary reasons you should be interested in the shape of a boat's hull.

I've got a vault filling up with good stuff, and the weekend transition day is a good day to start watching.

First up, a teaser for the Global Ocean Race 2014-2015. Who knows if it will really happen, who knows how many boats will show up if it does. But here's what they have in store:

And how about another beautiful kitesurfer, doing her thing, since that seems to be such a popular genre:

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean from Manuela Jungo on Vimeo.

And finally, we should take note of the fact that the fabulous Francis Joyon just broke the East-West

What the sea takes deep it does not usually give up. Unless you are Jeff Bezos, and you can't think of enough useful things to do with all that Amazon money piled up around you.

In which case you decide you want to spend millions of dollars recovering the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket engines that propelled Neil Armstrong to the moon.

Here's the triumphant Announcement from Bezos (or, more likely, an overwrought Amazon PR staffer):

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 20, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Well, of course they are not. But it is unusual to see them screwing up. Here's the New Zealand Herald:

Team New Zealand have damaged their wingsail - a hi-tech and expensive piece of machinery - in a dramatic launch incident in the Viaduct this afternoon.

The incident occurred as the team were preparing to fit their wingsail to the platform of AC72 catamaran in gusty conditions. The 40m wing-sail needs to lifted into place by a crane - an extremely delicate process at the best of times.

A Team New Zealand spokesperson said as they were hoisting the sail, a big gust of wind blew across the the Viaduct, picking up the sail. The leading edge of the hard sail is understood to have clipped the side of the main building of Emirates Team New Zealand's base, ripping the skin and causing some rig damage.

Repeairs should take just a few days, and Oracle remains the champion when it comes to trashing a wing sail. But still. I definitely would not want to have been the guy explaining what happened to Grant Dalton.

Bonus link: ETNZ's Glenn Ashby talking about what it is like to trim the wing sail.

Update: ETNZ's wing is back in action, and a chastened shore team says "lesson learned." (video after the jump).