I love Samson!

I came home this evening to this.

It’s the rest of my rigging and should take care of me for a long time.  Samson www.samsonrope.com gave me more than I had requested in each line, which is great because it allows me to refine the running rigging on Myrna to the point where everything is working perfectly.  

All of my sponsors have been an amazing to me, but Samson and Lewmar have gone way beyond what I could have wished for.  Neither company has ever flinched at a request, and they both always over deliver.  It is deeply inspiring for me and makes me want to do the same for them.  

I need to get the big Lewmar branding on though.  All I have are these little decals and two large ones that are in white, which doesn’t really show up well on my boat.  I’ll send Lewmar an e-mail right now.

I have a few more logos to put on there still, but it’s coming together.

-R

P.S. Standing rigging is in the mail as of yesterday afternoon.

Is the answer in skateboarding?

When I was in junior high and high school, I skateboarded a lot.  There was once a time when I couldn’t imagine not wanting to skateboard.  Three broken ankles, one broken arm and two concussions later, I can’t remember why I felt that way.  But, I may have found a redeeming feature from my past that will help me with my mast.

What I did was flatten the outboard end of the brackets.  Between the spreader and the uni-joint I put two pieces of g-10 to act as sliding plates and a skateboard truck bushing to dampen the movement up/down and fore/aft.  This may have a few benefits, but the first one is that it will stabilize the spreaders when I’m stepping the rig so nothing gets over extended in any direction.  Beyond that I’m still waiting to get my standing rigging and as of this morning they hadn’t started.  It is holding me up because I can’t touch the sails until the rig is standing.  Ooof!

And here is the gooseneck Barry built.  It’s very simple and very light, and for some reason I have not seen one like it before.  I hope there’s not a good reason for that.

-Ryan

Another good thing in motion.

Today I spoke with Rick at US Spars.  They are building my standing rigging.  Initially we are going with dyform so I can see if there is anything that needs changing before I go with some of the more expensive and labor intensive PBO rigging.  If I can get that this week, the rig will go up and we can finish the mainsail. 

Also, Julie nested the jib today.  We are using Dimension Flex pentex, and as you can see it’s a cross cut sail.  The material is really light.  I went one weight lighter than what DP and Ullman were recommending, and I want to see if the sail can handle it.  It seems tough for it’s weight though, and I’ve used the Flex before on other boats with a lot of success.  This sail will have two reef points, and it will be interesting to see how it holds up offshore.  The first jib and mainsail are essentially an experiment for us to push the material and see what we can get away with for the Transat sails.

 

Here is the much smaller and much heavier jib from my old mast.  The new sail is about 35 square feet larger, and  with the first reef in will be as large as the old jib. 

Yeah, Myrna is going to be much quicker than she was for the Bermuda 1-2.  This I can see now.  Reliability is the next priority.

-Ryan

Little things today.

I spent the day doing the final little bits for the mast.  I’m modifying the mast head crane to mount the VHF antenna and the wind instruments.   I’m taking molds from there to make the parts off the mast.  No picture, because there ain’t much to see.  Also I’m modifying the spreader brackets Barry did to accept some skateboard bushings to dampen the movement of universal joints for the spreaders.  No pics of that today because I just don’t have something I want to show there yet.  Maybe tomorrow. 

I also laminated some nuts to the inside of the mast at the base so that the mast base will be removable.  I used a bit of G-10, routed out with a nut inside and a small G-10 cap to compress it with another nut to squeege out all the 345 epoxy.  That’s right, “squeege”.

When it has cured I’ll remove the screws and the nut you can see (there are nuts buried inside each of those) and then I’ll attach the mast base.

I used the left over 345 to glue on the mainsail luff feeder.  I used the old one from my previous mast and it needed some filling for the new tube.  I’ll rivet it on when it’s cured.   These are one of the most important pieces of equipment for singlehanded sailing.  These days, I won’t even go sailing if there isn’t a really good luff feeder on the mast.  Without it you have to wrestle the luff in the mast and run back and forth between the mast and cockpit when hoisting and reefing. 

It’s just a bunch of little stuff these days.  I should get my standing rigging next week, at which time I’ll splash the boat and step the rig.  From there we’ll get a little more info about mast bend characteristics and Dave Ullman will figure out the luff curve he wants us to put in the mainsail. 

-Ryan

Dave……………Dave……………..

I received my B&G displays yesterday from the repair shop in Fort Lauderdale.  I installed them today and am pleased to see the familiar red glow burning on through the night.  It’s like I’ve finally flipped the power switch on Myrna and she is awake and waiting for her orders.

The title of this post was brought to you by H.A.L.

Sleep well.

 

-Ryan

Holding pattern.

This is a glimpse of the sewn panels (now in 3 large panels) with all the reinforcement strips for reef points sewn down.  We are waiting to hear from Dave Bolyard, my sailmaker and Ullman Gulfcoast owner.  We need to talk to him to discuss some ideas before we carry on.  He is of course racing in the J22 midwinters, because that, be like, what sailmakers do. 

And here is the daggerboard or canard that Barry reshaped for me and painted.  It is super fine now.  I’ll use it upwind and will build a case for it so it can be stacked downwind.  I have a piece that was cut off from the bottom to plug the hole while reaching and running.

This daggerboard has been brought Columbia Sportswear. 

-Ryan

Sailmaking time, USA!

I got back to Louisiana last Wednesday and we began working on the sails.  It’s been great working with the Ullman group down here.  I’ve known them for a while, and Bolyard runs a pretty tight ship.  So far we’ve just started the mainsail.  Lots of little details to plan out before we began cutting, so it’s been fairly intensive.

Here are all the cut panels for the Mainsail and the scraps of beautiful Dimension Polyant woven pentex.  This stuff is wicked.  Very light and very stiff.

Here it is ready to be assembled.

I also had a special guest this weekend.  Gale Browning, the woman who last raced my boat in the 2001 Mini Transat as passing through on her way to California and stopped by to visit her old boat and see what I’ve been doing to her.  Naturally, she was not taking the easy path to CA, but instead riding a motorcycle.  It was great to talk to her and go over everything.  She also revealed to me the the main designer of Myrna Minkoff was not actually Finot, but rather a rising star in the world of yacht design, Guillaume Verdier.  He was working for Finot/Conq at the time, and apparently this was his take on the previous Finot design. 

I also recieved a bunch of clothes from Columbia Sportswear and now have a fabulous new wardrobe, part of which I’m sporting in the next picture along with Gale Browning.

More mainsail stuff tomorrow.

-Ryan

I actually went sailing…

I’m in Miami preparing the M65 www.minisinamerica.comand we went sailing on Wednesday.  She comes from the drawing board of Owen Clarke Design and as expected she sailed beautifully.  With the large overlapping headsail and narrow shroud base she pointed very well.  This makes me very excited about the new sail configuration for Myrna, because this boat definitely went upwind better than my boat in its old configuration.  I’ll be here for a few more days working on some final details for the M65 and sailing a bit with Christian Fittipaldi before heading home to prepare Myrna’s mast for stepping.  According to Pat, Barry has done a beautiful job finishing my mast and I can’t wait to get some pictures online.  It’s nice to go sailing again and Myrna’s day is just around the corner.

Me and Christian checking the helm of the M65 on our initial sail.

This illustrates how tight the sheeting angle is on the genoa.

We will be sailing again tomorrow.

-Ryan

I’M IN MIAMI!!!

And I’m okay.  We are finishing the M65 and should be able to go sailing tomorrow.  I will take pictures of that for you all.  I have not been online since coming here a few days ago, but all it well.  There is no internet where the boat is or where we are staying, and no time to go out of my way to get online.  Will keep you posted.

-Ryan