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UK-Halsey Newsletter
UK-Halsey International
September 2011

 Email UK-Halsey

Peter Gustafsson photo
SILVA HISPANIOLA NEW ORCi EUROPEAN CHAMPION
Hanko, Norway – The 2011 ORCi European Championship, hosted by the Royal Norwegian YC (KNS), was won by Peter Schmidt and his German team sailing the Evento 42 SILVA HISPANIOLA, which was powered by UK-Halsey Sails. Winning Division 1 and the overall title by 9.5 boats was the result of the six-year-old boat’s superior boatspeed and crew work. The German team never finished worse than fourth in the eight-race series, and never worse than 3rd in the six inshore races. Second and third went to two IMX 40s.

In contrast to SILVA’s dominance of Division 1, the winner of Division 2 was never clear all week; new leaders came with nearly every race. Martin Nilsson’s Swedish team on his Salona 37 FEELGOOD won, and runner-up was Kai Haupthauf’s X-332 Sport VARUNA XPRESS, another all UK-Halsey customer. VARUNA, earned the second place trophy on the strength of winning two inshore races on Thursday and by finishing second in the long offshore race. VARUNA XPRESS was the Corinthian Trophy winner in Division 2 Corinthian

SILVA HISPANIOLA’s success is the first international title for a project that started three years ago. Peter Schmidt decided to make an investment in the sport and set up a team of young sailors to campaign his boat. He built a team of nine sailors in their late teens and early 20s who would be mentored by himself and UK-Halsey Germany’s Dirk Manno. Schmidt said, “This crew was devoted to learning all aspects of offshore racing. They trained intensively, even on cold winter days and spent just as many days working to optimize the boat. Throughout it all they were listening and learning from their experienced tactician -- UK-Halsey’s Dirk Manno.”

“Besides the well trained crew, the basis for their success was the engine of a boat – the sails,” said Schmidt. “When the new MatriX Titanium sails came aboard the boat met and exceeded her targets. As all sailors know, offshore racing takes a heavy toll on sails. But we have been very happy with the durability of our Titanium sails. This championship was won with a two year-old mainsail.”

Editor’s Note:
At the 2009 ORC German championship in Flensburg, the X-332 CHINNOK was the winner followed closely by SILVA HISPANIOLA. And two years before that, CHINNOK won the IMS Worlds (the precursor to ORC) in 2007. Both boats only use MatriX Titanium sails, which are only made by UK-Halsey.
J/24 NORTH AMERICANS
Lynn Gray photo
Mauricio Santa Cruz’s J/24 BRUSCHETTA, won all three races on the first day of the 2011 North Americans, sailed off of Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a windy first day, the winds were light and shifty. A new leader moved to the top of the leader board each day. In the end, Mauricio’s team sailing with a Matrix Technora genoa, finished 3rd in the 42-boat fleet. Most racers would be happy with such a results, but Mauricio has been used to finishing on top. In 2011 he won the Brazilian Nationals, the South American Championship, the US Nationals, the Italian Nationals and a handful of other major J/24 events in Europe.
THE UK-HALSEY CODE 00
Pictured below is the new UK-Halsey Code 00 spinnaker. This chute is designed specifically for jib reaching situations on boats rigged with non-overlapping jibs.



Jibs used on boats with this sail configuration are intended for windward performance. They are typically very high aspect sails, which means they develop a lot of twist the minute the sheet is eased. In a word, they are not good reaching sails; thus, boatspeed suffers the minute the wind gets too high or too close for a regular Code 0.

Enter the Code 00 (Double Zero)! It is a small Code 0 that (on a sprit boat) sets with the sprit only partially extended allowing for more luff tension. The Code 00 sheets to a spot forward of the corner of the transom (usually with the sheet running through a twing line). The twing can be eased in puffs opening the top of the sail and then trimmed down again once the puff passes.

The Code 00 is made from an appropriate weight Code 0 laminate for maximum shape retention.

Sailing tests indicate higher boatspeeds than a jib in virtually all wind speeds where the sail can be carried and apparent wind angles in the high 40's were easily achieved in lighter going.

Need some reaching help? Maybe the Code 00 is the answer? Call you nearest UK-Halsey loft.
CLASSIC BEAUTY: ANDY LONGARELA REPORTS FROM THE HELM


Pictured above is the 30-meter (98-foot) HISPANIA, which was built for the King of Spain, HM King Alfonso XIII, in 1909. She has recently finished an extensive rebuild, is getting ready to race again with UK-Halsey Spain’s Andy Longarela as the skipper.

HISPANIA is a 15 Meter International Class gaff-rigged sloop designed by William Fife that is 69 feet long on her deck. Her crew of 20 works hard since there are no winches – truly old-school.

Andy Longarela says, “To sail on this kind of boat is a magic experience. When you approach the boat you are overwhelmed by its elegance; the whole boat seems to be suspended over the water. Being only 50 feet on the waterline and nearly 100-feet long, there is a lot of boat that is over hangs the water. Her boom of solid wood that weights 1.2 tons protrudes past the stern three meters and her 6-meter bowsprit floats over the water in front of the boat. Her deck seems endless – everything including the wooden blocks is varnished to perfection. And then there is the endless web of rigging, all rope that is all the same color.



On the water it takes 10-12 people to raise the mainsail, about half an hour to get all the sails up. The boat sails as elegantly as she looks; she quickly reaches nine knots. Being heavy, the waves seem to move around the boat instead of the boat going up and down. Yet, she still is very sensitive to sail trim and crew positioning. With no winches, every sail control is by hand; needless to say, every tack and maneuver involves a lot of manpower.

With a resurgence of interest in vintage boats, there will be three other 15-Meters sailing again: TUIGA, THE LADY ANNE, and MARISKA. All four will be racing next September at Monaco Classic Week. This will be the first time in over 100 years that 15-Meter yachts will be racing each other.
WindAlert- BETTER DATA. BETTER DECISIONS
Web, iPhone, Android- Free Applications!
  • Real-Time reports from over 50,000 stations worldwide.
  • Virtual stations for any point on the globe.
  • Customized Alerts- Set your wind alerts for Real Time or Forecasted thresholds.
  • User Profiles- Build your own list of stations and share them with your friends!
  • International forecast models + our own WRAMS high resolution model.
  • Tides, Wind Archives, Wind Statistics, scrolling wind graphs,…..and more!
WindAlert is created by a small group of sailors, engineers, and meteorologists striving to create an easy to use, free, and complete wind resource. We invite you to come take a look and tell us what you think!

New Features this week:
  • Real Time virtual stations- By integrating the 50,000 weather stations in our system with high resolution computer models, WindAlert is the first weather application to produce a real-time wind estimate for any spot on the globe. All you have to do is click on the map to see and create your own station for the locations where you go.
  • Nautical Charts!- We have just added full Nautical Charts for North America! Come see how awesome it is to see the wind data (real and virtual) overlaid in real-time on the charts you use every day!
WindAlert Widgets:

Do you have a website? Then you need wind data! WindAlert wind widgets are designed to give you valuable content for your visitors. Widgets are completely customizable for color, size, and units to match your website. Simply cut and paste a little code and you’ll have wind graphs, wind maps, forecast tables, forecast graphs, or one of our favorites: Wind Statistics!



For more information about WindAlert please visit www.windalert.com or you can download our popular smartphone applications
FREMANTLE WINTER SERIES


The Valmadre Cup was the final race of the four heat Fremantle winter series; 45 boats came out to race in a gusty 25-knot northeaster on Gage Roads off of Fremantle. In Division Zero, Trevor Taylor’s Marten 49 OPTIMUS PRIME staged an overdue charge in the tough conditions to take the triple crown of line honours, first in IRC and first in YAH handicap. OPTIMUS PRIME’s heroics fell just short of grabbing the IRC component of the series, which was won by Tony Carter’s Beneteau First 40 JUST CRUISIN’ – another UK-Halsey powered boat. JUST CRUISIN’ dropped a sixth to carry two firsts and a fourth to win the IRC crown for the Winter Series after a tie-breaker with the well sailed Farr 40 YO!2



Tony Carter, owner/skipper of JUST CRUISIN’ was not only thrilled with the boat and his crew, made up of older experienced hands and some novices, he expressed sincere thanks to the UK-Halsey team headed up by Geoff Bishop in the Fremantle loft. Tony said, “This is a new boat and I have received tremendous support from Geoff and his team – not only in the supply of some great sails but more importantly in the services offered to make sure we are on water and fully prepared to go racing. I have worked closely with Geoff for over 15 years and it is his high standards that keeps bringing me back.”

In the overall series scoring for Division Two, Peter Kennington’s Whiting 32 BAD HABITS was second in IRC and she tied for first under YAH.

In the cut-throat YAH-only Division Three, CLODAGH Irwin’s Beneteau Oceanis 33 Anastasia survived a fourth in the windy Voladora to
SKIPPERS TIPS ON USING BOOM VANG
Learn to Sail Like a Pro - Pump up Your Performance with Sailing's Secret Weapon! Do you use a boom vang--also called a "kicking strap"--on your small cruising or racing sailboat?

Vangs on larger boats combine a rigid tube with the mechanical advantage of block and tackle. If not, you are losing lots of power from your mainsail and your small sailboat will be thrown out of balance on reaches with tons of weather helm, loss of punching power, and excess heeling. Few controls in sailing are as overlooked and underused as the sailboat boom vang.

Did you realize that the boom vang ranks second, right behind the mainsheet in your ability to trim the mainsail for maximum sail power? Look at this selection of super tasks this single piece of sailing gear can perform for you:
  1. Trim your sails to perfection on reaches.
  2. Serve as a preventer on smaller sailboats.
  3. Keep the leech shaped for power in heavy air.
  4. Trim Your Sails to Perfection on Reaches
When beating or close reaching, the sailboat boom lies close to the centerline or just over the edge of your boat. The mainsheet performs the job of pulling down on the mainsail to keep the leech trimmed just right. But what happens on reaching points of sail?

When the boom hangs out over the water on beam reaches or runs, the mainsheet no longer has the power to pull downward on the boom. This causes the end of the boom to rise, the leech to curl into a half moon, and the sail draft moves all the way aft. You end up with severe weather helm and a white-knuckle helm in a stiff breeze.

Pass the baton over to a boom vang whenever the end of the sailboat boom gets out over the water. The vang will pull down on the boom, tighten the leech, and give you just the right sail shape for powerful performance.

Keep the Leech Shaped for Power in Heavy Air

When the wind begins to build, you want to move to heavy weather trim tactics. This involves more than just reefing. You need to use the vang, along with the mainsheet and traveler to maintain good mainsail leech shape to provide power and performance.

Follow these steps when its time to move the mainsheet down the traveler track:

  1. Tension the vang just a bit to remove slack.
  2. Move the mainsheet car to the desired spot along the traveler track.
  3. Set the car in place (track stops or traveler line)
  4. Stand aft of the mainsail. Sight up the leech.
  5. Slack the mainsheet a bit until you see the leech twist halfway up the sail.
This technique will help spill high-octane wind higher up off the water to keep the boat more level and balanced. And it will keep your boat on her feet, and provide more power to punch through a chop.

Pump up your mainsails power on reaching points of sail with a boom vang. You will learn how to sail a boat better than ever before with peak performance, speed, and drive.

This article came from Captain John Jamieson’s SkipperTip.com. Jamieson, with 25+ years as a master mariner, has developed a unique, step-by-step training method that will show you the skills you need for safer sailing anywhere in the world. You can buy his book with 187 different lessons or subscribe to his website where you can watch short videos or read concise articles like this one. Click here to sign up.
TAPE-DRIVE STILL THE MOST DURABLE PERFORMANCE SAIL EVER


Cliff Hadox ‘s Aerodyne 38 MUSICA won the spinnaker class at Texas Race Week with a Tape-Drive inventory that already had thousands of miles of hard sailing on it. “I’m very happy with my Tape-Drive sails,” said Hadox. “I used them for more than 3000 miles and they still look new with a great shape.” MUSICA finished with two bullets and a fourth.

“Texas Race Week followed a four-month offshore campaign,” said Hadox. “I found out how durable Tape-Drive sails are by accident. Our delivery main and delivery genoas were to be shipped to Montego Bay, Jamaica, for the trip home, but this plan fell apart two days before our start in the 2011 Pineapple Cup; therefore, MUSICA sailed back to St. Petersburg, Fla., from Jamaica with her racing main. During the delivery, we reefed and shook out the reef three times before reaching St. Petersburg. Then, MUSICA was the second monohull to across the finish line and finished first in the PHRF spinnaker class during the Regata del Sol al Sol. Once again MUSICA sailed back to Galveston, Texas from Isla Mujeres, Mexico with her racing main. The 1st,1st, and 4th win at Texas Race Week was due to our ability to sail downwind deep with boat speed, and our great upwind speed. I am pleased with our racing program so far this year. MUSICA has sailed in three offshore regattas, and has won two of them. Again, I cannot say enough about the quality, durability and performance of MUSICA’s Tape-Drive sail inventory.”

MUSICA’s UK-Halsey Sail Inventory
Tape-Drive Taffeta Kevlar/Carbon mainsail
Tape-Drive Taffeta Kevlar/Carbon AP #2 Jib
Tape-Drive Taffeta Kevlar/Carbon #3 Jib
MatriX Kevlar/Carbon Jib-Top Reacher
Runner Asymmetrical 0.6oz
Reacher Asymmetrical 0.75oz
SHOOTING STAR WINS NEW YORK CLASSIC OCEAN RACE
Steve Cain, owner and skipper of the Beneteau 36.7 SHOOTING STAR, writes about winning Division 7 in the 2011 Around Long Island Race. This is a 190-mile race that is a near circumnavigation of New York’s Long Island. The race starts off the southwest corner of Brooklyn and finishes at the northwest corner of the Island off Sea Cliff Yacht Club. SHOOTING STAR beat the second place boat, another Beneteau 36.7 by over 45 minutes:



“The key to success in any distance race, besides the obvious -- work hard, never stop trimming, put yourself in the right place on the course keeping tidal current and weather conditions, both in the present and projected over the duration of the race, at the front of your strategic thinking -- is to have an arsenal of sails that allows you to take advantage of every wind angle.

“SHOOTING STAR's distance racing success over the past few years has been in direct relation to our development of asymmetrical spinnakers that we fly on a traditional spinnaker pole. For this race, the predicted southerly built up and held almost from start to finish --our brand new A3 reacher, with its fine entry, full shape and easy trimability allowed us to go pole forward, almost into Code Zero territory, when the wind cycled hard to the south, and we were able to square the pole back and ease when it moved 20 degrees or so back to the west without losing boatspeed. Our main competitor within our division had a brand new giant masthead asymmetrical spinnaker on a sprit, but they were unable to hold the tight angle when the wind cycled forward and had to sail much deeper than us and put themselves into a more downwind situation and were unable to take advantage of the hotter sailing angles that we could.

“It was a fairly simple race, flew the A3 to Montauk, peeled to a symmetrical spinnaker to work downwind around the eastern end of Long Island, and then back to the A3 and then the genoas for the rest of the race down Long Island Sound. We never had to tack until just before the finish; instead, we just kept changing jibs and reefing in response to the variations in wind speed.

Shooting Star crew left to right: UK-Halsey's Jeff Tyrrel, Chris Bingo, Carl Silbergleit, Steve Cain (owner), Dan Watt, Will Pritz, Steve Pritz, missing Wes Bemus, Mike Colucci.
“Our UK-Halsey Tape-Drive offshore main is easy to reef, holds its powerful shape in the lighter air and can be flattened well for heavy air. The race was wonderfully consistent and fast -- that's how they hook you to come back for more!”
STARBOARD ALWAYS HAS RIGHT OF WAY RIGHT? WRONG!
HERE ARE SIX TIMES WHEN YOU NEED TO THINK AGAIN
Latitude 38 photo

What is going on in this picture? Why aren’t protest flags flying? Boat 18484 is on port tack and the boat in the middle on starboard tack is maneuvering to keep clear. The Beneteau with sail number 40 seems to be exerting her rights as a leeward port tack boat. It looks like the big guy in the middle is about to be squashed. Well this is one of the six times on the race course where a boat on starboard tack needs to either keep clear of or give mark-room to a port tack boat. In this case the boats are about round a mark to starboard. Boat 18484 is an inside boat entitled to mark-room, and therefore the outside boats, even though they are on starboard tack need to give the inside boat mark room. Rule 18.2 (b) says: If boats are overlapped when the first of them reaches the zone, the outside boat at that moment shall thereafter give the inside boat mark-room. Therefore, in this picture, the two starboard tackers need to move out of the way of the port tack boat to give her mark-room, which is room to sail to the mark and then room to sail her proper course while at the mark.

Five other instances where a boat on starboard must either keep clear or give room to a port tacker are:

2. While tacking
Rule 13 says: “After a boat passes head to wind, she shall keep clear of other boats until she is on a close-hauled course.” Therefore, a boat that is tacking from port to starboard, becomes a starboard tack boat once she passes head to wind, but if she encounters a port tacker before she finishes her tack while falling off to a closehauled course, she must keep clear.

3. While sailing back to the starting line after the starting signal
It makes no difference if you are heading to the starting line to re-start after starting early or if you are sailing to the line because you were late for your start, in both cases you have to keep clear of boats that have started and are sailing away from the line. This is another case where a boat on starboard tack would have to keep clear of a boat on port tack. If the port tacker is sailing away form the line and you are heading to the line to start, you have to keep clear as stated by Rule 21.1.

4. While Taking Penalty Turns
Rule 21.2 is a related circumstance where a starboard tacker yet again has to keep clear of a port tack boat. When you are in the midst of taking a one- or two-turns penalty, you need to keep clear of other boats. In other words you have lost your rights and must keep clear of all other boats.

5. While Sailing Backwards
Rule 21.3 brings up yet another case where a boat on starboard tack must keep clear of all other boats, including those on port tack. It states, “A boat moving astern by backing a sail shall keep clear of one that is not. The rule book’s definition for determining what tack a boat is on is: Tack, Starboard or Port A boat is on the tack, starboard or port, corresponding to her windward side. Therefore, the boat going backwards with its mainsail backed is on starboard tack when her windward side is her starboard side. Which side her boom is on only pertains to the definition of windward and leeward in the specific case when a boat is sailing dead-downwind or by the lee.

6. At a Continuing Obstruction
Rule 19.2c, which covers room at a continuing obstruction says, “While boats are passing a continuing obstruction, if a boat that was clear astern and required to keep clear becomes overlapped between the other boat and the obstruction and, at the moment the overlap begins, there is not room for her to pass between them, she is not entitled to room under rule 19.2(b). While the boats remain overlapped, she shall keep clear and rules 10 and 11 do not apply.” Rule 10 is port/starboard.

Hurricane Irene ran over New York City last weekend, but luckily the City was well prepared. Shown above is the dock at the City Island Yacht Club being battered while boats in the mooring fleet buck in the waves. Judith L. Judson photo
UK-Halsey International, 175 City Ave., City Island NY 10464


175 City Island Ave. | Bronx, NY 80027 US

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