Sodebo - off to a flying start

[SloopJohnB 322]

Well not quite.... more of a submarine.

 

[cam 0]

far out, he is one cool customer (presuming that is the skipper talking when his boat is going over).

 

"ang on a moment while I just ease this genoa sheet just a little bit, this is a bit annoying exuse me, now where were we...."

 

Wonder what he is really saying, anyone speak french who can make it out....

[smithy09 50]

Yeah, I was pretty amazed at how cool he was. No dropping the mike, running to a winch or anything, just a "business as usual" attitude.. Big gonads. You multi sailors, how close is that to a pitch-pole? Looked close to my uneducated eye!

[ScottiE 174]

I suspect he wasn't actually on the radio at the time - just a bit of production license!

 

Just read an article on Sail-World where is he is quoted (translated in English) as saying;

'It's manly, I knew, I'm between 28 and 32 knots and it is true that it portends a good start to the race but we must be focused and truly over.'

 

or translated by ScottiE as

'yeh - my kahunas are pretty massive - but, mate, stop asking stupid questions about something that's done and dusted - I'm busy!'

[cam 0]

 

I expect it is similar to when a mono digs in, once you are in this situation there is a fair amount of luck involved in what happens next due to several things (sea conditions, amount of rudder foil left in the wet stuff, nature of gust, wind angle, what breaks, speed you can dump the sheet, how much she rounds up when nose down).

 

One difference on fast multis is the sails are usually hard sheeted in due to the apparent wind being so far forward, and once you lose speed you are way over sheeted and have a lot of sheet to dump (on my boat rounding up is best avoided as this puts massive strain on the foils, increases the wind force on the rig (until you are welll rounded up), and it is usually best to bear away and sometimes to even sheet in for the worst gusts to depower). I dont think this is all that different from modern ultralights.

 

I am hardly qualified to judge tho, my tri is a little light foiling machine thing and although I have came close to pitchpoling like this several times, my boat does not have anything like the mass/momentum of a bigger tri. This makes it easier to save, and even if it goes over, is recoverable from a pitchpole (by one person), where it lies stable fashion nose down, mast horizontal.

 

This looks on the ragged edge to me tho. Actually more so in the still image and a little less so when you watch the vid.