Bigger is not always better
Having watched in awe at the 12-foot skiffs racing around Sydney Harbour a couple of months ago, I finally got the chance to have a proper go. Skiff owner Cameron McDonald needed a helm/crew, so needless to say I jumped at the chance.
Cameron's boat is pretty unconventional by 12-foot skiff standards, in that he has gone for the less-is-more approach with his boat. In fact, as he pointed out, I wouldn't really get to experience what a true 12-footer was really like. As I mentioned in Rolltacks a few issues ago, most 12-footers have a choice of four rig sizes for different conditions, and with the longest bowsprit the boat can measure 29 feet from front to back.
Also because sail size is unlimited, most 12s forego the benefits of a self-tacking jib to gain the overlap in the sailplan. And because the gennakers are so enormous, crews use bags for launch and retrieval, the same as an 18-foot skiff or Laser 5000. With just 12 feet of boat, there isn't enough room to store a kite in a chute.
But Cameron has defied the bigger-must-be-better approach with his beautifully simple boat. He has opted for convenience and ease of handling as his first priorities, even if he does end up a little compromised on sail area. In fact, for starters he only has a choice of two rigs to other people's three or four. He also has a much shorter and retractable bowsprit - in keeping with most skiffs in the UK such as the 49er, 14 or RS800. And in keeping with the UK style he has opted for the convenience of a spinnaker chute. He has also accepted a smaller jib size in order to incorporate a self-tacking jib. This means the jib can look after itself while the crew can take the mainsheet through the tack, leaving the skipper to concentrate on getting through the tack and hooking himself up on the new trapeze wire. All in all, a very user-friendly boat. Just as well for a 12 virgin like me.
The first time we went out, it was all a bit of a rush, so there was little time to get settled in. Cameron said I should helm, so I did, and off we went. It all felt remarkably familiar, very much like an International 14, with Cameron working the mainsheet and me just steering and holding on to the jib sheet for a bit of balance. It was just as well it did feel familiar because there was plenty else that needed paying attention to. We were out racing on Sydney Harbour the same Sunday as the finals of the JJ Giltinan Trophy.
Not only were there 20 or more 18-foot skiffs battling out the end of their world championships, there were spectator boats and spectator ferries going this way and that, following the 18s around the Harbour, and helicopters overhead shooting all the action. On top of that there was all the usual weekend traffic out there - motorboats, jet bikes, cruising yachts, racing yachts etc. And then were the ferries that have right of way over everyone, the green and gold Manly ferries which yield to nothing and have munched a few skiffs in their time. Last but not least was the enormous ocean-going Spirit of Tasmania, which casts a shadow across the water as she makes her majestic progress through the Harbour, blasting everything out of the way with her horn.
So with all this going on, you need to keep your wits about you, especially when you are sitting firmly at the bottom of the food chain, as you are in a 12-foot skiff. Pretty anything that we could run into out there would have made mincemeat of us. Apart from the traffic of course, there is also the small matter of racing your competitors and trying to pick your way through the endless unpredictability of the gusts and shifts on the Harbour.
With all that in mind, Cameron's less-is-more approach becomes very appealing. When you are tight reaching towards the next mark and the Spirit of Tasmania presents this 400-foot steel wall less than a hundred yards to leeward of you, it's very comforting to be able to run in and get rid of the kite through the chute, rather than battle with a faceful of cloth as you try to rebag it. If you need to crash tack, you stand half a chance of getting away with it if you have a self-tacker, whereas you stand very little hope without it.
User friendliness is one thing, but what about raw boatspeed? Well, it was very difficult to tell because on a place like Sydney Harbour no two boats are every sailing in anything like the same breeze. Speed testing would be virtually useless. Of course, you get small glimpses into how you might be doing when you're racing in close proximity to another boat, but that's about all. So it's difficult to draw conclusions.
The luff length of our kite was about 8 metres compared with the 10 or 11 metres of the boats with the longer fixed bowsprits. So you might have thought that on a medium airs day, such as this particular Sunday, that big would be better. But I saw no evidence of this. Every time we were racing downwind with another boat we seemed to have equal if not better boatspeed to them, and this included a couple of boats that finished top three in the recent 40-boat Interdominion championship. And whenever we reached a leeward mark neck and neck with another boat, we'd almost invariably come out ahead because Cameron would whip away the gennaker into the chute and be back on the trapeze while the other crew was still battling with the customary faceful of gennaker cloth. So in many respects, ease of handling really does translate into a boatspeed advantage.
Unfortunately I can't tell you that we won, because my helming wasn't quite consistent enough for that. Yes, since you're asking, we did swim. Most embarrassing was the bear away in not very much wind. It hadn't even occurred to me to take a couple of steps back, but as soon as I pulled the tiller towards me and eased the mainsheet, the boat soon pointed out the error of my complacent ways. The boat nosedived in no time flat, and we were thrown over the handlebars. I really should have worked that one out for myself, but it had been so docile upwind that I really hadn't anticipated such a harsh lesson. The lesson is, the shorter the boat the more likely it is to nosedive. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out.
It will also come as no surprise to hear that performance upwind bears little comparison with performance downwind. The 12 is never going to fly upwind, limited as it is by waterline length. Turn the corner, however, and it's as fast as just about anything sailpowered other than an 18-footer, and even then it will give an 18 a good run for its money.
I love what the 12s are doing as a class. Being unlimited by sail plan is almost unique in our sport, and so these are among the very few sailors testing the limits of power and control, especially at the dinghy end of the sport. It is always tempting to assume that where sails are concerned, bigger and fuller is better. When you're unlimited by rules, it's like being in a kid in a candy store. Why not pile up the shopping trolley if there's no price to pay? But I think Cameron's caloried-controlled diet approach to the 12-foot skiff looks to have real merits. We raced the following weekend again in medium air conditions in a small fleet that included the top three boats from the Interdominions - all big bowsprit models.
With me crewing and Cameron steering, we were in a tight-knit group of three with the lead changing many times between us, not on boatspeed but on getting shifts and puffs right, as far as I could see. When the race reached the half way stage, Cameron and I went through our pre-race agreement of swapping places, which all went fine until I over-corrected the tiller out of a gybe - and in we sploshed. We lost touch with the leaders and ended up coming a distant fourth, but I'm still very impressed by the speed that we had in full power conditions, using gear that is considerably smaller than the accepted wisdom in the class.
Cameron doesn't have a regular helm or crew, so he hasn't yet proved this theory with hard results. He finished fifth in the Interdominions, crewing for top 49er coach Emmett Lazich who was racing the 12 for the first time. In a regular and practised pairing, I believe Cameron could prove that smaller is better, certainly on a busy place like the Harbour, where it quite often feels more like being pinged around a pinball machine than being in a sailboat race. The 12-foot Nationals are coming up soon in Brisbane, but that is a minimal-shift, open-water venue where sheer horsepower might become the dominant factor in success. So it will be interesting to see how Cameron's small rig set-up gets him through a drag race.
Richard Woof took a similar approach when designing the gennakers for Rob Greenhalgh's 18-footer RMW. His kites were noticeably smaller and flatter than most of the Aussie kites and yet the yellow boat has never lacked for speed. Woofy talks about the importance of designing for shape first and size second, whereas others have opted for hanging the biggest bag between mast and bowsprit that they can get away with.
In the 14 class we have reaches as well as runs in championships courses, partly to stop kite sizes becoming ridiculously oversized. But having been through the 12 experience, I'm not convinced we'd make our kites any bigger in the 14 even if we just did windward/leeward courses. The same is true of the 470 and Fireball classes where smaller spinnakers are quite often faster than big ones.
Skiff designer Julian Bethwaite boils this whole debate down to one word - balance. When designing any boat, Bethwaite is obsessed with tweaking the foil and rig plan until he achieves this magic ingredient. This holds an important lesson for all of us, even us non-technical types who don't have degrees in naval architecture. It's a basic lesson in how to sail our boats. Whenever you're sailing, try experimenting with changing different aspects of your set-up and your technique, and see what works and what doesn't.
But how do you know what's working and what isn't? Well, apart from the obvious, of gauging your performance against others in a race or a tuning session, it's also about looking for the signs of a balanced boat. The clearest and most important sign of boat balance is what you feel through the rudder. A balanced rudder is a good indicator of a healthy set-up. In a strict one-design, especially one like the Laser with just a single sail, you can't achieve this perfect balance through the rudder as there is inherent weather helm designed into the boat. But on a boat with a mainsail and a jib, you can experiment with different tensions until the boat wants to track in a straight line.
I remember on one occasion in the 49er where we were absolutely flying along upwind even though we jammed the jib on as hard as we could and the mainsail was being blown inside out. The slot looked far too choked, but the tiller came into balance and the boat shot forwards. If we eased the jib, the mainsail started behaving better but the tiller felt heavy, and it was slow. On that occasion, having the jib oversheeted was the lesser of two evils.
I'm sure we would have been going even faster if we could have worked out a way of having the tiller balanced and the mainsail behaving. Perhaps in retrospect, it might have been letting the jib out on the track to let the slot breathe, or maybe pulling up the daggerboard and using this as a way of depowering. Cunningham, vang, mast rake and rig tension are also other ways of creating balance in the boat. Keep on experimenting until you find a combination that works. It's worth it, because there's no better feeling than when you can feel the boat hit warp speed.
