Offshore racing

T CEE at LA TRINITE SUR MER

From, Multihull International, May 1988 By Captain M J Orr RCT

T CEE is probably the only pink multihull in the UK. People who see the boat for the first time look at this 35ft Banshee catamaran inquisitively. In general, once they recover from the shock of her colour, they admire the styling of the white rig and the grey trim. In Britain one or two look and may ask to have a look around. In France, where people are not as reserved, they look and mutter. If our French cannot answer their queries we refer them to the back beam where in ten inch high letters is written Palamos Performance Multihulls. This either answers their query or they come on board and have a look round. So why was T Cee, an eight-berth cruiser racer, 250 miles from Plymouth competing in one of France’s premier multihull events? Richard Laight, the Managing Director of Palamos Boatbuild, Richard Woods the boat's designer and I thought that it would be an excellent opportunity to see how a Banshee shaped up against her French counterparts. Consequently we entered in the cruiser class.

La Trinite Sur Mer and its 600-berth marina is on the northern tip of Quiberon Bay. This beautiful cruising area of sheltered waters has such delights as La Morbihan and La Belle Ile on its doorsteps. For the multihulls it has flat water as its principal delight. The racing was divided into four main classes. Class 1 was for the grand prix racers. Though subdivided into two groups, those over 60 feet and those under, the boats started together. Jet Services and Saab. Turbo dominated this class; however there was to be close racing between the three Nigel Irens designs; Fuiicolor, Fleury Michon and Laiterie Mnt St. Michel. Lado Poch, who had been trimmed down to size for the CStar was also there competing against the new trimaran Elf Aquitaine and the futuristic We, recently renamed Sebago. With such an array of talented skippers and beautiful boats it was hardly surprising that these dominated proceedings.

Class 2 was also divided into two groups, Chaffoteaux Et Mourry as the sole Formula 40 in one, and all the performance multihulls except the micro multihulls in the other. This included the Formula 28’s which have proved very popular in France but have not caught on elsewhere. The sole British entrant in this class was Peter Hopps’ Triple Fantasy, which was doing this event as part of her preparation for the CStar.

Class 3 was for the cruisers of whatever size, which ranged from a 50ft catamaran sponsored by a catering equipment manufacturer to a Bobcat. Class 4 was. for the micro multihulls –an ever expanding class of boats under 26 ft in length and with basic accommodation. Having suffered a 48 hour beat to reach La Trinite, we were disappointed to have missed the race briefing. However it being in French we probably would not have learned a great deal. The 22 pages of closely typed French on A4, complete with course diagrams endeared us to our French/English dictionary for the first evening.

From it we deduced that our start was at 10.45 the following morning. Regrettably we found La Trinite to be very quiet and the atmosphere of a great sailing festival sadly lacking. Having sailed in France before, we should have anticipated a delayed start to any racing. We had not realised that this would amount to 40 minutes. However, we stooged around and marveled at the Class 1 boats as they. Effortlessly worked their way around the starting area. Also impressive was the finish of virtually all the boats present, many of which were sponsored. The paint jobs and sails were beautiful. However, in our start, the general knowlege of the rules was most disappointing. The logic of several boats’ approach to the line defeated us, particularly one small trimaran whose aluminium took a liking to pink gelcoat and whose skipper got a very direct English lesson.

Despite crossing the line a little later than intended, we tacked clear of the line into clear air and settled into a windward beat in 15 knots of wind, to watch the majority of our class disappear into our wake. Four miles later we rounded the mark second to a well-sailed Newick trimaran and amidst the Formula 28s who had started 10 minutes before us. The course as set was 45nm, but with high pressure settling into southern France the shorter course was quite welcome some six hours later. The only boats that finished anywhere near us, were the Newick tri with whom we had had a great race and Orco, a micromultihull foiler tri who had started with us.

We won our class by 32 minutes. Triple Fantasy had had equal success winning her class on elapsed time. We found the free bar in the Europe One hospitality tent and quietly celebrated our success with typical British reserve. A little the worse for wear we tried to find the corrected time result some three hours later to be told that there were still boats out on the race course!

Day Two was similar to day one; late start, long course, little breeze and Class I boats churning up water everywhere. That is a little unfair, they silently and almost effortlessly went about their business but their sponsors power boats, helicopters, microlights and inflatables went with them everywhere. How the skippers could concentrate on their sailing was bewildering. Every tack, gybe and, dare one say it, mistake was filmed and some of it for TV that evening. Such is sponsorship! We led our class throughout and had built up a 20-minute lead at the last mark of the inevitably shortened course. The ten-mile run to the finish saw us, with the Formula 28s, sail into a hole. The wind came from astern and the 50ft cat, sponsored by the catering firm, pipped us at the line. Her 3000 sq.ft. spinnaker dwarfed our 1200 sq.ft. masthead spi and her ten seconds victory was translated into a 12 minute win on corrected time. The logic of her handicap defeated us - still this was France. We and this cat shared 1st place on points which left everything to race for on the final day.

The final race was an Olympic course with Class 1 doing a super Olympic course but within close proximity to the rest of the fleet. Sailing seemed more popular than church going in La Trinite and small boats were everywhere despite the thick fog. Undeterred the race committee started the race with the customary delay. How anyone found the small yellow spherical buoy that served as the windward mark, I do not know. Needless to say we made the mistake of sailing away from the fleet hoping we would find it first. We did not and the mist cleared behind us allowing the remainder of our class to find the mark before us.

Despite this setback we completed the course, most of it in the mist, 20 minutes behind the boat we had to beat to win the series. However the racing was livened up by the spectacle of the Class 1 boats charging around the course. It was a fantastic sight. Jet Services appeared several times with the top of her mast stuck in the mist and her enormous spi dominating all we could see. It was majestic.

When we got back to the marina we hurried to the prize giving to find that we were too late. Even though there were still boats out on the race course the prize giving went ahead and eventually we found out that we had come second in our class. How this was calculated remains a mystery as we had only just completed our declaration. Though not explained at the time, the committee had decided to calculate the results on elapsed time and not on corrected time. What chance this gave the Bobcat and the Quest 33 I do not know. It all left a sour taste. We eventually picked up a bottle of champagne, box of biscuits and bag of junk and departed.

Having paid our Euro70 to enter, we felt that little if anything had been done to make us at all welcome. The event was geared up for the Class 1 boats, all of the social functions started when they tied up at their moorings, which gave few of the other competitors a chance to enjoy the atmosphere their presence created.

We were left with the impression that the French are not the multihull experts they might presume they have become. Their beautiful looking racing boats, particularly the Formula 28s and the micromultihulls, have a poor windward performance and are not particularly fast off the wind. Their cruising boats are painfully slow. Very few boats were well sailed and their beautiful, expensive sails were generally poorly trimmed. So fellow British multihull sailors take heart and try to join us in competing against the French in their multihull races, helping to demonstrate the proliferation of good British multihull design and construction we currently enjoy.

I think that because multihulls often race against monohulls in this country our sailing skills are sharpened, particularly to windward. However, T Cee and Triple Fantasy did well as did Nigel Irens, as Fujiicolor one of his designs, won the 60ft class. Richard Laight and I managed to blow out the blues La Trinite had left us with by sailing back the 300nm to Plymouth in just under 36 hours. Apart from a marvelous sail it also enabled us to complete our qualifier for the Yachting Monthly Triangle. Regrettably we might have brought this to under 30 hours had the wind not dropped in mid Channel and we had to use the outboard iron genoa to complete the last 40nm of our trip home at a rather sedate 6 knots such is multihull sailing!

The ‘to windward’ Debate 1992 by Ian Holt, Yachts and Yachting

The 90-mile Plymouth to Falmouth race, was dominated by Richard Woods, designs; his craft won two of the three legs in 0-30 knots of wind. Leg One took the fleet from Plymouth to Falmouth, with the multis starting 5 minutes behind the monos. In 25 knots the Woods’ own screaming yellow Sagitta ‘Sagitta’ rounded the windward mark 15 minutes after the start, just astern of a Sigma 38 whose owner had declared 'I would buy a multi if only they sailed better to windward.’

A 15-mile spinnaker run to the Eddystone was followed by a fast two-sail reach with the first multis passing all the monos, and the Banshee ’Dasher’ pulling ahead to finish a clear 20 minutes in front of ‘Sagitta’ and over 40 minutes a head of the first monohull; multis took the first four places on elapsed time, with the Banshee also winning on handicap. The second leg took the fleet on to Fowey, with the multis showing off their Achilles’ heel by losing out to windward in only 7 knots of wind. In these conditions cats can either point high or foot fast ... but not both.

The high wetted surface area of two thin hulls make them uncompetitive, even with daggerboards and drifters. The multis began to pull back on the 20 mile close reach to Fowey, with ‘Sagitta’ finishing fourth after a gybing battle with the Selection 37’Tide Chaser’.

Leg number three took competitors back to Plymouth. It is traditionally a pursuit race aimed to produce a mass finish, but a complete calm for the first 90 minutes meant that the slowest boats were only one mile from Fowey when the last boats started. With most of the course a reach or run ‘Sagitta’ and ‘Dasher’ pulled ahead of the fleet, with ‘Sagitta’ gybing downwind to finish two minutes ahead of ‘Tide Chaser’ with the shortest elapsed time for the whole race.

Having shown the West Country monos that multis can go upwind as well as down - so long as there’s enough breeze - the Woods’ next event was the two-handed Plymouth to Fowey race, let down by a disappointing multi entry a week before the Plymouth GP.

As usual the multis started last, but soon pulled ahead in 30 knot conditions that had the monos broaching wildly on the run down to the wing mark and counting the cost of sailing with so few crew. Firebird ’Phoenix’ raced ahead until Mike Tebbutt decided to drop the spinnaker, which promptly went under the boat and round the rudders, forcing her retirement.

Still carrying her kite, ‘Sagitta’ pulled into a clear lead ahead of the Banshee ‘Cracker’ which had blown out its newly repaired spinnaker, taking three hours 40 minutes for the 40 mile race at an average speed over 11 knots.

After it was over, Richard asked himself, ‘Why do so few multis turn up to race?’ He believes many cruising multi owners think they can never win, because they don’t have the latest racy designs. However, they forget the beauty of the PY system which allows anyone to win providing they sail well - the PY is a personal yardstick and unlike a rating rule is unaffected by the boat’s design.

Maybe crews are also daunted by the expense of all the safety equipment needed for racing; yet racing implies other boats being in sight, and should you really go cruising without the minimum safety gear required by the racing rules? Others are maybe worried about breaking gear; Richard and Lilian find that having taken part in a strong wind race makes them much more efficient in the boat when they’re next out in bad weather.

Richard finished by saying: ’Twenty years ago there were regular fleets of 20 boats; now many more multis are sailing, but the fleets are no larger. The Multihull Offshore Cruising and Racing Association’s most urgent priority is to get more boats to the start; not to worry about race rules or even results. The races are organised, so what are you waiting for?’

The PASAB 1992 by Richard Woods, Multihull International

THE 130-mile PASAB, or Penzance Around the Scillies and Back Race, has been run for the last fifteen years by the very friendly Penzance Sailing Club. We hadn’t done the race for eight years which is a great shame as it is an interesting race with friendly competitors in an excellent sailing area.

The race traditionally starts on a Friday evening with a night sail to the Scillies. As usual the monohulls started first and in the light following wind it was clear that not everyone was out to win for several boats did not set spinnakers. The first mark was five miles downwind and Jake the Peg (nee Quest, the 53ft tri that Mike Birch sailed to third place in the Transat en Double) rounded first, closely followed by our Sagitta and Ace (nee Tom Bombedil, the UK’s top half tonner). Other monos in contention were a First 32s5 and a Jouet 950.

The wind was 15kn apparent at the start of the 50 mile beat to the Scillies and the first three monos began to pull away until, as dusk fell, the wind dropped and the multis clawed back lost ground. This was very encouraging as we have written before about the problems of sailing multihulls fast to windward in light winds. We slowly beat out to the Wolf Rock, occasionally confused by the lights, for at times twenty ships were in sight, all changing course as they rounded Lands End, and it was hard to keep track of the other yachts.

Around midnight the wind picked up and freed and it began to rain. Never mind, we could now point the Scillies and were sailing at 8kn. At dawn we could see Jake finishing about four miles ahead, incredibly, just behind us Ace appeared, we had obviously overtaken her in a rainsquall and had never seen her lights.

One beauty of multihulls is their shoal draft and we were able to get in close to the shore and so avoid the worst of the congestion in St. Mary’s. Some aluminium French boats were even closer in, one actually aground on some rocks! The trimaran Zamaran finished three hours after us, but the last monohull not until 1500, not surprisingly Saturday is a rest day! On corrected time Sagitta won, followed by Ace, Jake was fifth and Zamaran eighth.

On Sunday the course was ‘around the islands and all out-lying rocks’. We had been to the Scillies twice before, both times in calm conditions and thick fog, so we were glad that this time the forecast was for good visibility, but we were less happy to hear about a SW 5/6. The weather at the Scillies is hard to predict as lows can go up either the Irish Sea or the English Channel. This time the forecasters were wrong, the wind was light and visibility poor.

Jake and Sagitta soon overtook all the monos except Ace as we beat out to the Bishop Rock in a very lumpy sea (often the sails would go aback in the troughs only to fill with a bang on the crests). After rounding the Bishop we should have had a good spinnaker run, but the wind was still light and the swell meant that the kite kept collapsing - one of the times when a pole would help. At the north end of the islands the promised wind arrived and Sagitta quickly closed the gap on Ace and rounded the top of the island almost level with no boats in sight behind.

On the beat back the wind was rarely below 24kn and once reached 31. In flat water both Jake and Sagitta carried full sail, Ace was forced to change to Solent jib and then reefed. Jake was ideally suited to the conditions, long and heavy and despite original very tired sails, finished fifteen minutes ahead of us with Ace fourteen minutes later. Thus on a five mile beat the 30ft Sagitta had taken ten minutes from what is/was the fastest 30ft monohull in the UK. Clearly windage does not make as much difference as some armchair theorists think. (Sagitta is 6m x 2m, Ace 3m x 1m.) Never mind the monohull doubters who still think that multihulls don’t go to windward.

On corrected time Sagitta and Ace were again first and second, Jake third and Zamaran fifth. Most of the first two legs had been on the wind, yet multihulls still won.

The third leg back to Penzance was to be perfect multihull weather, a NW 5, sun and a good swell. But disaster struck Jake at the start, the longest boat in the fleet and drawing 8ft, they discovered the committee boat was anchored in 7ft of water! The resulting bang badly damaged the board and case so the crew sailed cautiously with no spinnaker and as a result rounded the Wolf Rock neck and neck with Sagitta, the monohulls almost out of sight astern.

Close to the cliffs off Lands End the wind increased and although we were doing a steady 14kn, Jake finished ten minutes ahead. Their leak was rather worse than they expected for, at the finish, there was eighteen inches of water in the boat. Despite this obvious handicap Jake finished just inside the course record of 41/2 hours for the 45-mile race.

On Sagitta we did not want to lose the wind, so only stopped in Penzance long enough to hand in our declaration, then we were off back to Plymouth under spinnaker alone. We were halfway to the Lizard before the first monohull finished.

Not surprisingly, Sagitta and Jake came first and second on handicap, Zaraman was again fifth, Ace was well down at thirteenth. On Sagitta a successful race was followed by a glorious sail back to Plymouth, 98 miles in twelve hours, nearly all under autopilot and spinnaker.

And so to the prize giving. Some years ago MOCRA organised a regatta with thousands of pounds of sponsors’ money and MOCRA became known as ‘Multiple Opportunities for Cash Remuneration for All’. We had won every leg, were first multihull and overall winners, but we still did not expect to win eleven prizes. It seemed that everyone won something, so we re-named the PASAB - ‘Plenty of Attractive Silverware for All Boats"

In an earlier report I have moaned about the lack of cruising multihulls entering races. The PASAB is the ideal race for those new to racing. Spinnakers are not necessary and three quarters of the fleet are only along for the cruise in company. However, Penzance is a long way for most sailors and it seems a pity to miss seeing the Scillies having got there. Therefore, if there is sufficient demand, we will organise a feeder race from Plymouth to Penzance next year and would then suggest that the results of this race count instead of the last leg of PASAB, so that cruisers can spend longer in the Scillies. Anyone interested?