Well its been a long hot week here in Tuzla, when I wrote earlier that the summer had violently burst onto the scene I think I may have been a little subdued in my use of verbs because now we are really roasting, especially when the wind blows between the sheds, then it becomes like the Valley of the Dead.
So what have we all been up to………………………
Angelo Cacini has arrived back and more sail testing is under way with the mizzen testing being done in a couple of days, at the moment this consists of setting and furling each sail half a dozen times whilst the deck team hang up there, watching all the clews and tapes to make sure they are not catching or folding, the ultimate aim off course is to not have anyone up there at all when we start sailing the Falcon properly so it is test, test and test some more to make sure we are happy.
Now some off you might have asked yourselves how would you change the sail if it should get damaged, especially when they are wound onto a mandrel 56 meters above deck? Well it works like this; we have a spare mandrel that can be adjusted to the three different lengths between the yards, at the top of the mandrel there is a roller reefing bearing and at the bottom we have a reduction gearbox powered by a three phase motor. This mandrel is taken aloft using a halyard onto the bearing at the top of the mandrel and a tag line, it is then positioned on a couple of braces top and bottom between the two yards and opposite the sail to be changed. The next process is that the outhauls are taken out and wound onto the mandrel and the brake is released on the mast mandrel, power is engaged on the sail changing mandrel and it winds the sail off mast mandrel and onto the sail changing mandrel, then the whole lot is lowered back to the deck. Once on deck we take off the damaged sail and load on a new sail, then up again and back into position and this time we set up the inhauls on the mast mandrel and use the power of that to wind the sail back onto the mast mandrel from the sail changing mandrel.
Right, I know some off you have just read that last paragraph and thought that’s going to take an awfully long time and how would you do that at sea? The truth is that yes it does take a long time, the first time it took three hours, but as the crew learn the system and it evolves then this time will reduce, and at sea……who knows, in a squall no way, but a quiet day, done safely, then there is no reason it could not be done. The thing is that no one has ever built a DYNARIG, let alone sailed one, so this is very much an evolution, we are all learning and very lucky to have the chance to be pioneering in a new method off sailing.
Anyway below decks the engineering commissioning is moving on as we brought the air conditioning system online, now this might sound very nerdy but when the outside temperature is 38 degrees and you can bring the whole yachts interior down to 15/16 degrees with one compressor working at 50% you know you have a nice system and this system is nice, Heinen and Hopman have given us a great set up.
The couple of problems we had during our last sea trial have been ironed out and we are now getting ready for the next sea trial, which will be this week sometime.
Yesterday we had a much needed day of and the crew did a trip up the Bosporus and into the Black Sea for lunch at a small town called Poyraz, it was a great trip especially as we did it in the comfort off our two tenders. If you haven’t heard about the tenders then I would strongly recommend a look at the Pascoe website (link is on the contacts page), they are fantastic boats and with their racing heritage the hulls make for a very pleasant ride over just about anything.
Well time to sign off I hope you all have a good week.
George Gill