S/Y Refanut

Classic Race 2011

2011-12-15T15:16:00.000-08:00

Wonderful video of a week sailing and racing along Sweden's east coast.

Ghoster (Gamla Refanut) for sale

2011-10-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

Just this past week I got an email from Bent Lyman who has owned Ghoster / Rendez-Vouz / Refanut since 1976 letting me know that she is for sale. I hope she finds a good home, hopefully in Scandinavian waters. More information on Bent's website.

Here we go!

2011-09-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years we've been debating the need for replacing the teak deck and some adjacent parts. Well, the time has come. Refanut is spending the winter in the care of Stockholms Båtsnickeri and they will blogging about the project here.

Last week they lifted Refanut out of the water and I must admit that seeing the pictures makes me glad I wasn't there. I would have been too nervous (what if that sling slips?).

Apart from replacing the deck we're also looking at some replacing and/or removing some deck hardware to clean up her look a bit as well as look over the mast and parts of the running rigging. For example, we still have two wire halyards (jibs) that were responsible for several bloodstains on the deck during this years ÅF Offshore Race ... we can't have that with the new deck can we?

I'll be sure to post again as we make more final decisions on changes and updates.

In i dimman

2011-07-07T03:15:00.001-07:00

En lång och stånkig plattläns är inte vår grej. Nu skall vi in i dimman utanför Gotland och är i gått? sällskap med Anitra. Småbåtarna har gått fantastiskt fint, inte bara mot oss. Just nu skulle jag gissa att Volonté leder.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sweden

No Watski2Star

2011-05-25T02:03:00.001-07:00

We set off from Bergvik with destination Oxelösund and the start of W2S yesterday. We had some trouble with the engine cooling right away, but managed to fix that. However, some 5 hours later our engine died just south of Landsort and we had to turn around. We're now investigating the problem and are unable to fix it quickly, thus no start for us. Now we just have to hope we can get the boat ready for GSYS's Big Boat Challenge on June 18 and then the Classic Yacht race within ÅF Offshore Race in July.

Fredrik & Gustaf

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Korsholmsvarvet, Dalarö, Sweden

The mizzen sails stay home this season

2011-05-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

After doing several ORC runs we decided that it simply wasn't worth 5 seconds / nautical mile to use the mizzen. Therefore we'll lighten our sail inventory (a very little bit) this season and leave the mizzen main, staysail and gennaker home. A further advantage is that there wont be any mizzen gennakers/staysails blocking the sun in the cockpit, something that has been a great source of discontent with the crew in past years.

/fredrik

Using iOS devices for sail racing

2010-11-29T15:59:00.000-08:00

Using iOS devices for sail racing

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed to optimize the use of iOS devices (iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches) for sailing. These are both hardware and software needs. This document will try to outline both and describe what a solution may/should look like.

Hardware

There are areas of concern here. A) weather proofing, B) battery life and charging, C) connectivity to on-board instruments.

Weather Proofing

Magellan recently released a hard case, ToughCase, for the iPhone that looks extremely promising (except the price and it may not be possible add an armband). There are a large number softcases of them for both iPhones and iPads in various sizes such as DryCASE and Dry Pak. One conceptual favorite is the armband case from H2O Audio (Dry Pak also has an armband, but not as elegant). The reviews are mixed, but I can see it being the perfect way of wearing an iPhone/iPod when racing. For the iPad, I came a cross a pouch designed for diving just the other day, but can’t find the link now.

The product that is missing is a hardcase for the iPad with a built in dock connector and an external, waterproof, marine power connector. Basically I’d like to have a hard case that could be permanently mounted and powered. Yes, the case also needs some mounting points.

Battery Life

The easy solution here is to have external battery packs that clip onto the back of the device. There are several options out there like this one from Kensington.

Once again, having a powered case for the iPad would be very useful for some applications.

Connectivity

A number (two) apps for iOS already offer integration with NMEA 0183 over Wi-Fi, iNavX and iRegatta. This brings up a couple of issues. A) you have to get your data to NMEA 0183 (and not N2K for example). B) you need to broadcast it over WiFi.

The first is pretty standard. There are lots of bridges and multiplexers to translate from different standards (bridge) and join the streams from multiple instruments into one (multiplexer). Broadcasting over Wi-Fi requires two further steps, translating from serial to TCP/IP and actually broadcasting it over WiFi. There are three types of solutions to this. The first two use a separate WiFi router and the last one is an “all in one” solution.

Using a PC/Mac

If you already have a nav computer downstairs that get the NMEA data, you can set it up to publish that same data over TCP/IP. If you use a PC, you can use NavMonPC or GPS Gate Client. For the Mac, both MacENC and GPSNavX will do the job (but they are not free).

To broadcast TCP/IP stream over WiFi you need a wireless router. Since you’re iOS device can only connect to one network at a time, it may be nice to get internet access over the wifi network (so that you can get both internet and nmea data at the same time). There are several wifi broadband routers suitable for use with a 3G USB modem. For example Cradlepoint and Dovado and, of course, Ice.net.

Serial-Ethernet Device

If you don’t have a “nav computer” but want to use a separate Wifi router, you can add a Serial-to-Ethernet box that will take the NMEA stream over the serial port and publish it over a TCP/IP network. You then connect that box to your Wifi Router with an ethernet cable. Moxa has boxes for both serial-ethernet and serial-wifi. That latter doesn’t add a lot of value since you still need the wifi router. There are several other providers such as Digi, Netburner, Portbox etc.

Integrated NMEA-Wifi

These products take the NMEA data over serial and publish it directly to WiFi and can also act as a WiFi router. The main benefit is simplicity. The downside is that they create a new network that will only be used for the NMEA data. This means you’ll have to switch between networks to get internet data such as GRIB files (downloadable to iNavX). I know of two options right now: Digi Wi-Sp and SEAMate1A Lite. The Moxa product mentioned earlier might work, but I’m not sure if it can create a network or has to connect to an existing one.

Software

There are a number of areas where iOS apps can help sailboat racers: Navigation (and Routing), Start and Performance. Most apps will cover more than one of these areas.

Navigation

Choices here include Motion X HD, iNavX and Navionics for both iPad and iPhone and some “light” apps like Eniros På Sjön for iPhone. The first thing to consider is whether the maps are on-board or have to be loaded on demand. The latter will not work if you’re not connected to the internet. Motion X has a hybrid version where you can download the map tiles you need ahead of time. In terms of the best alternative to traditional chartplotters however, you should really look towards iNavX and Navionics. Both of them require you to buy the maps as well as the app, but it is still cheaper than buying maps for your chartplotter (or paper maps for that matter).

Apart from straight up navigation, there are other nav features to consider such as AIS, tides, wind (grib files) and routing.

With AIS becoming more and more prevalent on leisure crafts as well as commercial ships, getting an AIS overlay on your map is a nice safety feature (and provides some racing intelligence as well when competitors are required to have their AIS on at all times). iNavX provides this (as long as you have AIS data streaming over WiFi as part of your NMEA data).

iNavX integrates with AyeTides but there are many such as Tide Graph etc. Before you buy, make sure you read reviews and check that tide information for your area is included.

When it comes to weather, the only app that will download and display GRIB files is iNavX. One app that deserves mention is Windfinder since it does provide outlooks, albeit not with a map overlay. For the Swedish sailors out there, you should not miss Klart.se since it includes the coastal weather forecast just like Boating Weather does for US sailors.

When it comes to routing, there are currently no iPad apps (an iPhone app probably wouldn’t make sense). This may well be due to the required processing power, although I hope we can convince Sailplanner to build an iOS version since, at least, their UI would be very easy to move to a multi-touch system.

Start

In my view there is currently only one app worth considering in this space, iRegatta. It is essentially a Velocitek Prostart on an iPhone (with the caveat that the GPS isn’t as accurate). However, iRegatta not only allows you to mark the starting line with GPS coordinates and then calculate distance to line and other starting features. It also reads NMEA data over wifi just like iNavX as well as stores performance information ... which moves us right along to:

Performance

There are a number of apps that will calculate VMG based on SOG/COG (gps data) and the like. However, by adding access to the boats other instruments through NMEA integration apps like iNavX and iRegatta provide you with much better performance data whether you are on the rail other otherwise unable to see the instruments well. There is still room for an app that would allow customizations of the views to truly become every crew members best friend (they may care about different instruments at different times), but using iRegatta (or iNMEA which is an “unrefined” little sister) gets you quite a bit closer to where you want to be.

My Ideal Setup

Because of the Internet consideration mentioned in the connectivity section, I would use a separate 3G router and a serial-ethernet box (even with a PC on board). For Swedish waters the ideal internet connection seems to be Ice.net since they have significantly better coverage than the GSM/3G operators

For cockpit navigation I’d have an iPad with iNavX mounted in a hard case. For tactical and performance information I’d use an iPod Touch in a Dry Case or, possibly Magellan’s ToughCase running iRegatta as the primary application.

What is missing?

As mentioned before, a mountable hard case for the iPad to let it challenge standalone chart plotters like the Garmin 700.
Routing software (Hello Sailplanner Mobile!!)
Refined tactical software (iRegatta improvements) ...

ability to load polars
user configurable screens
improved (decluttered) UI including locking of starting line and timer - to easy to click the screen by mistake.

Starting 2011 in splendid 2-handed style!

2010-11-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

Refanut is registered for next years edition of Watski 2 Star. Just like last year it will be Fredrik and Gustaf wrestling the grand old lady around the course. Unlike last year we'll pay extra attention to our measurement certificate :-)

Refanut withdraws from Watski 2 Star, 2010

2010-11-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

After an a longer period of research and discussions with various parties we've concluded that we did hoist a sail incorrectly, effectively using a spinnaker that was outside of the measurements on our rating certificate. The difference is minor and unlikely to offer any performance benefit whatsoever (3% extra foot length but about 10% less total area compared to our regular spinnaker), but still a difference.

The reason we started looking at this issue was because some people commented on us flying what looked like a gennaker on our spinnaker pole (correct, we were). We did this since we had ordered our gennaker to measure in as a spinnaker under IMS many moons ago. At first we thought there was a difference between SRS and IMS/ORC, but it turns out the rule is actually quite clear (after you get lots of clarification :-).

"Any sail you fly from a spinnaker pole is considered a spinnaker". What this means is that it has to measure as a spinnaker (symmetric luff/leech lengths, nylon etc. unless otherwise specified) and also count as a spinnaker in your sail inventory. As far as we knew (based on older information) we had no problems here and thought we were ok. However, after digging deep into the details of the rule we realized the discrepancy between the foot lengths in the SRS certificate.

Some review of our own documentation clearly shows how we made this mistake. This was our first time applying for an SRS (Swe LYS) rating. For this we filled in a web form (that is currently unavailable), but a copy of what I filled in based on our ORC (and IMS) certificates can be found here. Note two things:

They don't request the foot length for the spinnaker (but do for the gennaker).
The ORC Certificate is completely silent on these measurements.

Yes, we should have checked our SRS certificate when it was issued, but we didn't. We're looking forward to coming back to Watski 2 Star again next year ... with a correct certificate :-)

Fredrik & Gustaf

Refanut takes a rest after a busy season

2010-10-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

October 8-10 Refanut finnished the season with a cruise from Bergvik to Gryt where she will rest until next season. The crew, including Johan Albertsson, Pelle Johnsson, Inge Serler, Jan Twetman, Gösta Ericson & Olle Bergman enjoyed a two days beat in light winds followed by a nice reach today. The spirit has been on top all along and the food and and wine fantastic. There are few places better than the archipelago in the late fall. Thanks to everybody for a fantastic weekend in true Refanut spirit.

Watski2Star The Movie

2010-09-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

We finally got the clips from our various cameras together and edited. Some 3.5 hours of video became 14 minutes (which is still probably too much for most potential viewers :-). Enjoy and feel free to fast forward.

Fredrik & Gutte

Kräftköret 2010 - en slutrapport

2010-09-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

Med en strålande besättning som liknade GR plus fruar, några barn samt ett starkt bidrag av Pontus Benter.

Jocke tog rodret vid starten med Pontus som sin taktiker med support av Gustaf Johnsson. En mycket bra kombination så vi var först över start linjen. Fanny (flickvän Schierenbeck) tog vid på rodret en bit in på banan, vinden var SSO så Genua 1, vinden tickade upp samt ökade lite och vi bytte till gennaker. På Refanut är det alltid ett trevligt byte när apparent ökar och hon lägger sig ner och bara ökar. En Swan 651 som med Code segel hade tagit sig om oss blev snabbt avhängd. Marie W bytte av på rodret och rundade upp. Strålande nertagning och vi tog några båtar till som hade rundat just framför oss. Därefter följde en kryss som gick allt bättre. Marie är bra på att styra och allt eftersom vi passerade båtar stärktes hennes självförtroende. Tight rundning med ett större kustbevaknings fartyg (ca 1000 tonnare) involverade men rundningen gick bra och vi hade tagit Britt-Marie på kryssen. Peder jr W tog vid på rodret och efter en stund Madde (Peders flickvän). Gennakern flög stabilt trots den byiga vinden. Just före mål tog Sven Lagermans barn och fru Lotta över rodret och övriga fruarna seglen. Den manliga delen av besättningen vattnade kompass rosen, matade kölsvinet etc under däck. Denna segling och taktiska bragd gjorde att vi fick ett pris för bästa målgång. Vi slog dessutom Anahita, vilket alltid är kul då hon är snabb och alltid mycket välseglad. Våra fruar/flickvänner/barn gjorde en fantastisk insats som tog oss till 4:e plattsen i vår klass.

Vid tangentbordet,

Gustaf Dyrssen

Main website updated

2010-08-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

I've done some work on the section of Refanut's website dealing with previous Refanuts (of which there were three). I'm still trying to do more fact checking and hunting down more details, but it is a start. The page is here.

Tullgarn Royal Palace Race 7 August 2010

2010-08-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

43 yachts left Trosa this morning in light winds and a bit gloomy weather for the Tullgarn Royal Palace Race. An approximately 18 nm inshore corse with pusuit start and finnish in front of the Tullarn Royal Palace was ahead of us. The race started with a long downwind leg in 6-8 knots of wind and after rounding a few islets we had a long beatiful upwind sail to the finnish. Refanut finnished 7th at the race. After the sail we decided to start our sail back towards Bergvik and after a reach with the spinnacker in pooring rain we anchored in a bay south of Torö to recover and have a nice dinner to finnish of a fantastic event.

Trosa Seglar Vackert 2010

2010-08-06T01:42:00.000-07:00

The Crew for the event is:

Anders Lundin
Erik Gustafsson
James Travers
Johan Borglin
Johannes Rostad Bertoft
Olle Bergman
Peder Wallenberg Jr

First Race Nynäshamn-Trosa completed in light winds and sunshine. The course was free návigation from start to finnish which was to our disadvantage due to the deep draught. The smaller yacht could choose a much more favorable track and save distance. It was however a beauitiful day and good spirit onboard.

Docked in Trosa together with all participants with a fantastic spirit of classic yachts.

Gotland Runt 2010

2010-07-09T06:23:00.001-07:00

This years Round Gotland Race is now over and we had a wonderful time. Our results wasn't quite what we hoped for, but we sailed well given the conditions. A big congratulations to Britt-Marie for the line honors and, especially to Kerma. We look forward to next year.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Gotland Runt 2010

2010-07-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Less than a week to go to the start of this years Classic Baltic Race or whatever the Classic Yacht version of the Round Gotland race is called. The crew for this year is mostly old faces with a few new ones just to keep us old timers on our toes. The crew is (in alphabetical order :-) :

Fredrik Wallenberg
Gustaf Dyrssen
Gustaf Johnson
Jan Rosenberg

Joachim Ekdahl

John-Christian Eriksson

Peder Wallenberg
Peder Wallenberg Jr.
Peter Schierenbeck
Sven Lagerberg

We can be followed by updates on this blog as well as on twitter (@refanut). We will also participate in the event blog (http://www.gotlandruntbloggen.se/) and our progress on the course can also be tracked through http://race.ksss.se/, class ORC Classic (the page is currently only in Swedish but I hope that will change over the next few days).

iPad for Nav

2010-06-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

As I said in another post, we sailed all of Watski 2 Star Baltic using only my iPad with iNavX and Navionics charts. It worked great but there are some improvements needed to the process.

iPad:
1) The device is portable... sometimes you would like to mount it in a safe place. For that there needs to be a case (waterproof of course) that has some mount points on it.
2) 10 hours of battery life is a looong time for a computer, but not for an off-shore race. We had to take the iPad downstairs for charging once per leg. This wasn't a huge problem, but it does add another requirement to the case mentioned above, a built in dock connector and transformer and a waterproof power plug on the outside so that it could be hooked into power out in the cockpit (not sure what is "industry standard", but I'd look at what Garmin etc have).
3) The screen is not as bright as one would like, especially when you get some waterspray on the case and when you're using dark sunglasses. Sometimes I had to take off my glasses and do a little angle juggling to be able to read the screen. Not a show stopper, but it is an area where other GPSs might beat out the iPad.

iNavX:
1) Setting up routes is easy but not perfect. That said, it isn't an harder than on any other GPS I've used. Hopefully the workflow here can be improved by the developer (he is VERY responsive and it is part of what makes it fun to use iNavX).
2) It does store the track, but since the iPad goes to sleep when you don't use it (great for power conservation), the track is broken up. If you could keep the iPad plugged in this could probably be solved.
3) GRIB files downloaded easily. My only complaint is that the resolution wasn't as high as I'd like and the interface for scrolling through the forecasts made for a lot of misclicks (not to mention sometimes loosing track of when the forecast is for). I'm sure that interface could be improved quite easily.

Case:
We used a pouch from Trendy Digital. It kept the iPad try and worked great. Being able to hang the iPad around my neck was nice but a) isn't great when you're standing at the grinder and b) the snap on the strap actually came undone once ... beware!
What would really be needed is a hard case with a built in powersupply. I'm not sure how to convince anyone to build that ... we probably need to get a large number of iPad sailors together to show that there is demand and then find a someone to design and build it. Quirky comes to mind.

The last piece of the puzzle for us is to get our instrument data onto the iPad. I'm working on that and will post my experience with it at a later date. For now all I want to say is:

iPad 3G 64GB: $829
iNavX: $49.99
Navionics Chart (including X-Traverse subscription): $40
Trendy Digital Case: 23.99
Telling the Garmin salesman that you bought a 10 inch portable chart plotter for less than $1000, Priceless!

Watski 2 Star Baltic - Recap

2010-06-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

It has been a week since we came ashore in Oxelösund and I'm already looking forward to the next time. Oh what a race! There are a many lessons learned, but fewer than I expected (mainly because some of the things we limitations we found can't easily be worked around ... Refanut is, after all, not built with short-handed sailing in mind :-). Now for a recap of Watski 2 Star Baltic 2010.

Refanut was not ready at the boat yard as early as planned. Part of that was the yard being swamped with other work (priorities...) and the other culprit was the cold winter which resulted in dryer air in the shed and, therefore, more time needed with Refanut in the water but on the "trailer" soaking up water and becoming seaworthy. The upshot was that Refanut was delivered to Oxelösund the day before the start of the race and myself and Gutte drove down from Stockholm to meet up. That, in turn, meant we had a few things that weren't exactly working the way they should be. Most importantly the auto-pilot.

We did figure out a likely problem with the auto-pilot and got some help from a friend (thanks Camilla) who drove down to Oxelösund with a replacement part on Wednesday. When we cast off to head out to the start we still didn't know if the auto-pilot was going to work, but it turns out that it did (for the most part).

The start wasn't as good as it should have been. During the hour leading up to the start the wind had died down a bit and we didn't adjust. The favored end of the line was clearly the downwind pin end with better pressure but we started, as we'd planned earlier, much further up the line. On the beam reach out from the harbor we were quickly outdistanced by the boats that had started to leeward. About 2/3 of the way out to the first mark the wind had moved aft far enough for us to set the chute. As we round the first mark and bore off on a downwind run towards Landsorts Angöring, the leaders in the group were faaaar ahead of us. We had, at least, managed to shake two of the boats that had been with us at and after the start ... you have to be happy about the small things.

During the night we (almost) managed to execute a perfect gybe on two. We sheeted the main in to center and put the boat on autopilot. I then flew the kite on the sheets from the cockpit while Gutte gybed the pole up on foredeck. Everything went very smoothely and we didn't drop more than .75 knots or so during the maneuver. The only problem came when we sheeted on the pole on the new tack and found that there was a wrap around the pole. Oh well, we got that sorted out too and headed up towards the mark. Coming into the mark we figured we could do exactly the same style of maneuver at the douse. Once again we sheeted in the main and I flew the kite as Gutte took down the pole and started unfurling the genua. Looking at the two boats ahead of us that had all but stopped after they got their kite down and before they could round up at the mark we decided to just keep flying the kite poleless as long as possible. We problably stayed like that for a good 3 minutes and picked up a lot of ground on the boats ahead of us. When we were ready to round up we gybed over and did a windward douse into the jib.

From then there was a straight shot down to Visby with the wind dying off during the morning hours and shifting against us a bit. The dying breeze prevented us from picking up any ground on the other boats. The final challenge was (as always) getting to the finish line in Visby where the winds near shore were almost non-existent. It is clear where we don't have an advantage when a 30 footer starts to overtake us. Finish we did however in 7th place in our "class" (out of 11) and roughly 1hr 25 mins behind the leading X-35 in our class.

The stop in Visby was much appreciated and the 3 hours of deep sleep I managed to get were more than welcome. Early in the evening it was time to set sail and head out once more. Here we were a bit lucky since the calm that had slowed our finish had only become worse and some boats hadn't even been able to start properly with the tides bringing them over the line early etc. By the time we set out to start the breeze had picked up again and we made a perfect start on port setting off on rhumb line for our next mark. Boy were we screaming! The wind was up enough for us to take advantage of our waterline and we were soon overtaking lots of (smaller) boats. During the night it was obviously hard to identify who was who, but I suspect we passed one or two boats in our own class as well on our way to Västervik. During the final hour into the mark the wind moved back and we were going DDW (sometimes almost negative) with the gennaker far out to windward. It would have been nice to peel to the spinnaker, but we decided that the maneuver would probably cost us more than the new sail would give us back. We rounded the mark cleanly and immediately picked up speed on close haul ... only to see the wind die completely five minutes after our rounding. Now we were just lying in the fairly big swell without any steerage. After a few minutes we decided that we might as well try to tack and head out from shore, partly because of a hope for better breeze, but mainly to get the sweels on our beam where it wouldn't hurt us so much. It turned out to be a great move as the wind started to fill in shortly thereafter and almost lifting us all the way to the mark. If I'd been able to sail us a bit better during the first hour on that tack we'd probably made it all the way up to the mark, as it was the pitch black darkness prevented me from seeing the tell tales and I was almost certainly not pointing as much as I should have.

During the night the new wind stabilized and we had a nice beat down to Blå Jungfrun in good breeze. We made a first tack away from Öland only to realize that it was a mistake when we came back on starboard. After that we stayed closer to the left side of the course and ended up picking up a lot of distance and passed several similarly sized competitors. After rounding Blå Jungfrun we could ease the sheets slightly and just joined the procession of boats heading for the finish line.

As the wind moved aft we made two bad decisions. First we decided to set the gennaker since we can carry it earlier than the spin. In hindsight it would have been better to wait a little longer and set the kite since the wind continued the back and we ended up in gybing territory (and quite unable to do that easily with the gennaker on the pole and limited space).

The second error was that I hadn't studied the charts well in advance. As we approached the inlet I decided that I didn't like the southern entrance for two reasons. A) it would require us to gybe and B) it had a few stones around 4m and, since we draw 3m, we try to avoid those. Thus I decided on a short-cut that would take us over a 6m curve, but well away from the 3m curve ... seemed like it should be reasonably safe. It was, but just barely. As we passed over the saddle Gutte was standing in the bow screaming "I see the bottom, we're going to run aground!" and I saw the depth sounder go all the way to 0.0m (at which point we have 30cm of margin). Next time we'll take the channel. At this time we're also going dead downwind in almost no breeze so the other boats are catching and passing us. Oh well, I guess that is the flip side of the advantage we had over them earlier that leg. We did finish the leg with the second best time in our class (corrected and sailed) and the 5th best time corrected overall / 4th best time sailed.

Once again the layover felt way too short. When I woke up after a three hour nap or so and looked at my watch in the dusk below deck I misread the hands and thought we'd overslept our start by an hour ... mayhem ensued for a few seconds. As it were we headed out to the starting line and arrived about 20 minutes before our starting time. As was by now our practice, we had a cooked meal right before hoisting the sails and were ready to go. In fact, I was so ready to go that I couldn't be bothered to slow down as we approached the line. I knew we were early but was hoping for a miracle. Needless to say none happened and we had to restart (we were over about 2 seconds early... would have been easy to fix if I'd just started some turns 30 seconds earlier).

Finally underway we had a nice and fast close reach out to Blå Jungfrun where we, once again, hoisted the kite. In the medium air, dead downwind conditions we were very fast compared to the boats around us and were savoring a quick return to Oxelösund.

Alas the winds didn't quite agree with us (or rather, we didn't like the fact that the winds kept the promise from the forecast). After a few hours the wind slowed and backed forcing us to gybe. This time we had too much pressure and waves to try to fly the chute pole-less and doused. Since we'd seen a small tear in the chute we decided to fix that before rehoisting. All in all it probably took us a good 40 minutes to get the chute back up again ... I guess that isn't so strange for shorthanded sailing, but it felt like an eternity to us.

Later that night the wind veered back towards south making another gybe necessary (once again, just as forecasted). This time, however, we were tired and it was pitch black. We were standing up on the bow with our deck light on debating alternatives. Greed, lack of experience and lack of sleep prevailed and we decided to try to gybe the kite by first "strapping it down". We unfurled the genua part of the way to prevent twisting around the forestay and went into the gybe. We got the pole over on the other side of the forestay and were about to try to get the kite over when the clew decided to to wrap itself around the tip of the pole. We ended up fishing up some 5 meters of leach-tape before getting the clew out of the water. We got the remains of our spinnaker down, gybed and unfurled the genua and, some time later, got our gennaker up. It turns out it pulls pretty well even on a run as long as you use it on the pole (it is about 30 m2 smaller than the spinnaker). The big difference however is that it causes a lot more rolling and is much harder to "strap down". Thus the next few hours were very strenuous since the auto-pilot was completely useless when it came to anticipating and parrying the waves.

Once again tiredness caused us to make a mistake and we gybed back about 30 minutes too late, having overstood the layline to Gustaf Dalén. On top of that we got a header shortly after gybing (together with more wind) and had to douse and sail the last hour into the mark under white sails. No problem in terms of speed, but we sailed quite a bit further than necessary. Right before the douse we'd logged 12.5 knots in a surf and it was clearly time to get the gennaker down before it went the way of the spinnaker.

We came in to Dalén together with a gaggle of other boats including our competitors Serendip and Rio as well as the overall winner, La Dolce Vita. Once we heated up to close haul the fleet started to separate a bit and we had clear air during our two tacks up to Grässkär. Here we were kicking butt and taking names, passing Serendip with a wide margin and catching the second X-35, Vitlucka. As we rounded Grässkär and could ease the sheets a bit we were once again above 9 knots and steaming for the finish. At some point in time we were even harboring some hope of catching the Aspect 40 Perfect, but in the end we ran out of time (we were only a few hundred meters behind them when they crossed the finish line however).

We finished the last leg just like the second leg, second in our class on both sailed and corrected time. This was enough to put us in third place in the class for the full race and a respectable 42 overall (out of some 100 boats). Happy and tired we enjoyed our pyttipanna before once again setting sail and heading back to Ingarö.

This certainly left us wanting more, but we are also painfully aware that Refanut is a little bit big for these types of exercises. What is without a doubt is that it was the most fun we've had sailing in a very long time.

Fredrik & Gustaf

Some pictures "lifted" from Ove Söder's web album without permission :-). Some more of my pictures can be found here.

Two down, one to go

2010-05-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

I'll post a better recap of leg one later, but we're now in Oscarshamn after having had a good leg two (and we didn't even run aground although we tried).

We started from Visby with a close reach in good breeze. Over time the wind opened up to a beam reach and we made great time towards our first mark off the Swedish coast. As we rounded Västerviks Angöring the wind died down and we were left with big swell ... not our favorite conditions. We managed to tack and head out from land as the wind filled in. It lifted us almost all the way to Ölands Norra Grund, but bad sailing (low and slow) early on meant that we "rounded" about 1nm away (since the next leg was a beat we just kept going). From Ölands Norra Refanut got to show her upwind pedigree as we passed several faster boats on our way to Blå Jungrun. The final leg in towards Oscarshamn was a fairly uneventful beam reach apart from the fact that we almost ran aground trying to get ourselves towards the finish line. The wind also died down and shifted aft which mean an excruciating slow finish. Now it is time to rest for the final downwind leg back to Oxelösund in some 5 hours.

It's the final count down...

2010-05-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

The smallest boats are off and we're doing some last checks on Refanut before our start in 3.5hrs or so. The wind has all but died in the starting area so we might be going nowhere fast. About half of the fleet have AIS transponders and can be tracked at:http://watski2star.solidtango.com/. This should include us, but so far we haven't been added to that list. I hope that changes.

Tablet nav ready to go

2010-05-18T13:50:00.001-07:00

Things are coming together. I have iNavX running on the iPad with Navionics charts and just got my waterproof case from Trendy Digital. All waypoints are loaded (first leg showing).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Twitter and Watski2Star

2010-05-08T20:57:00.001-07:00

We will be live blogging Watski2Star (if we can), primarily through tweets. Follow us @Refanut and #watski2star

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Instrument voes

2010-04-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to solve two instrumentation questions for Refanut. We have two "needs" at the helm, a chartplotter and a repeater for some of our other instruments (that you can't see when people are in the cockpit grinding). We've narrowed to question down to the following:

For a chartplotter we can either go with a wired one with an integrated NMEA feed like the Garmin 720 or us a standalone chartplotter + some other repeater for wind and speed etc.

Going the 720 route provides us with a "one stop shop" that we could mount next to the wheel on the same post we've used in the past for our LCD screen (that keeps breaking). There are only two downsides with this approach.

It will make the magnetic compass unusable (as long as the GPS is in place) due to interference.
The GPS will be very easy to steal, yet require a bit of effort to remember to remove when needed since there are some cables to disconnect etc.

The second choice would be a portable plotter like the Garmin 620. The upside is that it would be much easier to remove in the harbor (after all, you'd have to remove it and recharge it). The main downside is that a 9hr battery life means you'd almost need to run power up to the helm anyway. Still, you don't need the map up there all the time (and for leisure sailing 9hrs is probably plenty).

This would be combined with a wireless solution for an NMEA repeater. So far I've found two options.

Tacktick has, what looks like a simple "plug and play" solution in their T106 Remote Display. The upside is that it should be easy to connect to our current instrumentation since we do have an NMEA out port. The downside is that, while wireless, it is using the Tacktick Micronet which means the same feed cannot be used by other non-tacktick devices (computers etc).
It is also relatively easy to connect a box that will transmit an NMEA feed over WiFi. This would allow us to use any wifi device to display the data. The main problem here is that I haven't found any such devices (that seem to fit my needs). What I'd love to have would be iphone/ipad software for this since you could buy an iPod Touch pretty cheap and put it in a watertight case. I can also see how an iPad with a Navionics chart and the right software could be an awesome "tacticians tablet". All we need is the right software... :-)

Right now I'm inclined to go with the wired solution, but I'd love to hear if anyone has any ideas or suggestions.

----

Ok, after some more research I found that iNavX can receive and display NMEA data on the iPhone and there seems to be a few ways to transmit that data (1, 2), so maybe that is an option after all. Still, it wont be as quick and easy to get up and running as going wired ore using Tacktick.

This will be a new challenge!

2009-11-12T12:04:00.001-08:00

Refanut has now been entered into the Watski2Star two handed race this coming May. It is a three-legged race with short pitstops. The proposed course can be seen in the graphic below:

We'll have to work a bit more on the strategy, but since we have to get a new LYS certificate for this event anyway we might try to remove the mizzen to improve our rating a bit since we'll have our hands full without it. This will also prompt us to look over our instruments and make sure they work (the flux-gate compass never worked last year which meant that the autopilot didn't work either). This will be interesting :-)

Fredrik