First for Equation at BVI Spring Regatta

Sadly, the crusty Caribbean salt’s washed off, the sunburn’s beginning to peel, and the rum’s done for sailors who raced this year’s BVI Spring Regatta held off Nanny Cay last week. More than 100+ boats competed in the 41st edition of the regatta, with as many new faces as repeat players, including Bill Alcott from Michigan who celebrated his 15th event - this year on his newest boat Equation, the TP65 formerly known as Rosebud.

Equation took first place in Class 1, a particularly sweet prize, as it’s been a while since the racing beauty’s enjoyed the taste of success. The boat was designed by Bruce Farr and built in 2007 at Westerly Marine, Santa Ana, Calif. Originally owned by Roger Sturgeon, she won the 2007 Sydney Hobart among other international prestigious races. She dismasted in heavy weather during the Middle Sea Race off Malta in October 2009, and shortly thereafter was purchased by Australian Ray Roberts in early 2010.

Roberts fixed her up, including a new mast, and sailed a Newport regatta with the intention of taking her back to Australia later that year. But he didn’t.

Instead, the sleek 65, one of three including Money Penny and Luna Rossa built to the Rule, was purchased in spring 2011 by the American partnership of Bill Alcott, Ed Palm and Tom Anderson, aka ‘TA’, all from Michigan. They renamed her Equation.

Alcott says that the partnership was looking for a boat to race on the Great Lakes in summer, and also be ocean competitive for winter racing in the Caribbean. He said, “Rosebud was very successful when Roger owned her and we thought that maybe we could learn to do the same thing.”

Alcott, who has owned some 14 boats, says Equation’s a very technical boat and a step up for the boys. “We’re more traditional boaters and when it came to adapting to a boat with hydraulics, we had to rethink how we were going to do things and it’s been a slow learn, I think, for us. We intentionally looked for guys who had sailed her when she was Rosebud as they know the boat and that’s been an immense help.”

Guys like Matt Smith…who has a long career in the America’s Cup behind him and is currently involved in the Bella Mente Racing program, managed pit on Equation for the BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival.

It was a kind of homecoming for Smith, one of the original crew on Rosebud. He was involved in her build and raced on her for the three years following.

“It's been lots of fun to come back,” Smith said. “She’s still fast and easily sailed. I sail on a lot of leading edge boats and Equation still has a lot of potential for a niche boat.”

This year’s BVI Spring Regatta was number two for Smith - he previously raced it on the old Rosebud 52. “It’s a real diverse fleet that caters to all different types of racers," Smith said. "The course is also refreshing - sitting on the rail passing beautiful islands is very cool.”

For Alcott, this year’s regatta was only disappointing in that there weren’t a lot of big boats to do battle with. “We thought there would be more in our class - but the other boat that did show up - Passion 4C (Turner 56) was fun competition.”

Asked if the Regatta keeps getting better, Alcott replied, “I keep coming back with different boats so no, it’s not always better - LOL!”

Alcott, 74, has become enamored with Caribbean racing over the years as he loves the warm water, balmy temps and great racing, especially in the BVI where the water is relatively flat. “How can you not?” he challenged.

The BVI win was good regardless, especially after Equation was forced to pull out of the recent Heineken regatta in St Maarten after breaking a spreader. Project Manager Stu Argo, who has worked with Bill and his boats since 1995, says they were sailing upwind in about 18 knots of breeze in big seas when the second spreader broke.

“We came off a wave when the spreader broke but very happily we kept the mast - it’s very unusual that the mast would stay up - it’s also very unusual to break a number two spreader. The mast probably had 22 days of sailing on it - it was all pretty new. We sent the spreader back and Hall Spars ran some tests. We sent the lower spreaders back also and they made those spreaders stronger as well.”

“The boat’s an all around good boat,” Argo commented. “The wind range in the Caribbean is probably a little better suited to the TP52 - that mid range - whereas the TP65 is good in light and heavy air. I don’t think the 65 has a particular wind level that it’s weak on other than a jib reach which occurs with a lot of boats with non overlapping jibs. But that’s the fun part of the race - getting the right sails up at the right time,” Argo said.

There’re no plans for any major modifications on Equation, just general tweaking and replacing sails, which are key to success in the Caribbean as Smith pointed out.

"The racing here does offer up some navigational challenges and it’s key to have really nice sails for the island approaches - sails can make or break this regatta for sure, they make a huge difference.”

While she needs about 16-20 sets of legs over the rail, Argo says he’s never had any difficulty recruiting crew. “These events can logistically be a challenge - it’s easy to find 16 pros and pay for them to come down but that gets expensive. It’s not so easy to find that number of good amateurs who can take the time off and pay their own way but people do like sailing with us. We throw 2-3 pros in the mix in the specialty areas then get a crew together who have been sailing with us for the past few decades so we know them - seems to have worked out the past few weeks!”

Full Class 1 Results: http://result.vg/bvisr/minisite?series_id=16

Results for the 2012 Bitter End Cup, Nanny Cay Cup, Sailing Festival & Spring Regatta: http://result.vg/bvisr/minisite?p=vindex

* Ron Sherry wrote an informative article on Equation’s technical attributes last year, after Alcott et al purchased her: Equation is a very complex machine capable of doing amazing things as she does battle with the wind. In reaching conditions in light wind, Equation will sail 3.5 to 4 kts. faster than the wind speed. Sailing up wind, the Equation's target speed is 10.2 kts, and tacks inside of 65 degrees including leeway. -- Read on: http://iceboatracing.com/equation.html

Like A Virgin...

As the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything.

HOWEVER it blows me away to be in the British Virgin Islands with the likes of Dee Smith and Eric Arndt, two well known American sailors who have raced all over the world, to find out that neither of them have EVER been here before.

If Smith’s wife Jocelyn has her way, it wont be the last, “I was talking to a bunch of the guys and we’re like, ‘why have we not done this before’?!!”, she said.

A very relaxed-looking Smith concurs, “It’s beautiful here…”

He’s working with a new Farr 400 program - Blade - chartered by Michael and Marlene Schlens (Los Angeles). They’re just off the St Thomas Rolex Regatta where they placed fourth. Smith’s working with Schlen and his mostly local Los Angeles, CA., amateur crew, helping get them up to speed on the 400.

“We were pretty happy with that result and the racing was fantastic,” Smith said. “We had a nice match race with the other 400 - Magnitude (chartered by Doug Baker also from Los Angeles) - they could have won easily except they made a mistake on the last finish line.”

The BVI is proving an ideal environment for Smith and Co., to work Blade through its paces. Nonetheless, I had to ask the question, "Why do you think sailors keep coming back here?”

Simultaneous crack up around the table.

“Well duh! Just look around! What do you think - gee - there’s wind, the water is warm, it’s clear, you don’t have to wear anything…it’s like … beautiful!” Smith laughed.

Racing got underway for the BVI Sailing Festival on Wednesday, with a 26-mile race from the Bitter End Yacht Club, around the island of Virgin Gorda - a perfect combo of downwind and upwind racing, with some challenging tactics involved (reef, rocks…). The Blade team took 3rd overall on Wednesday and look good for the BVI Spring regatta 3-day festival starting Friday.

While it's hard to imagine anyone working up a competitive sweat racing in Paradise, Smith countered,

“It’s always competitive when the competitive people go sailing. Doug Baker and his guys are all very competitive boys - they’re a bit above where we are so they beat us pretty hard. The 52s that sail these (Caribbean) races charge pretty hard - they’re race boats, they don’t know how to stop them. Even some of the charter cruising boats are being sailed by some pretty good people. It’s just the performance. Our boat is really performance oriented and it goes really well in these conditions - it gets up and planes.”

Smith, along with Arndt, has been working for the past eighteen months with Premier Composite Technology (Dubai) building these boats. PCT build a lot of things - their real business is architectural composites - but they’re passionate about boats so they got Smith involved in putting the 400 together to try to develop the class. 10 boats have been built and a bunch more sold. A one-design class came together in Key West earlier this year, with five boats on the start. Smith is expecting at least four on the start at Charleston Race Week. His goal?

“We’re hoping we can get a really nice class going through the States and end this year with Big Boat Series in San Francisco.”

The nice thing about the BVI is the variety that the regatta offers up for teams, “You have wind, islands everywhere, you get to see things, the turtles, flying fish, the beaches - it’s lovely,” Smith says, “To me, sailing to a buoy is interesting as a race but it’s not interesting as a far as sailing goes. Here you get to go somewhere, you get to go around something.”

And it’s more than just about sucking back cocktails. Navigationally, it’s different, Smith said.

“You have to watch out for rocks and you have to be conservative because you don’t know the places. You don’t know how well the charts are marked. I navigate with my phone and follow the boat around and it’s fine. Our boats don't have the full computer set-up aboard so we’re relying on hand held GPS but it’s actually easier to use the phone.”

On the differences between the Farr 40 and the 400, mainly, there’s the weight - almost two tonnes. The 400 is only 38-1/2 feet long and the reason it is because it’s purposely built to the shipping rule - it fits in a flat rack to ship easily.

“We can send it from Dubai anywhere in the world for less than E12,000, which is incredible. I heard one client from Europe went to Sydney and it cost him E70,000 round trip, where it would have cost us about E20,000. The keel had to come off, the mast has to be in two parts, it’s a very high quality Southern Spas rig with EC 6 carbon rigging, and then we made a performance boat out of it,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the 400 weighs 3800 kilos - 2200 kilos in the keel - and it’s deep so there’s a lot of stability and there’s a lot of sail area. It’s got a retractable prod instead of a spinnaker pole and it gets up and planes in 13 knots, so performance-wise it’s completely different to the Farr 40.

“Upwind it’s a little faster than a Farr 40 but downwind it’s a lot faster,” Smith said. “But, I think the thrill is that it’s just more fun to sail. You kick it and it responds. It’s also kind of narrow so it goes through the seaway really well.”

Smith says the 400 also doesn’t seem to need the same intense hiking and weight control.

“We found that crew weight wise it’s almost a deterrent to be heavy - that’s like one of the first boats we’ve ever sailed on that is that way. If that’s the case why would we have a weight limit or crew limit? We’re probably taking those out of the rule. We think the boat will probably settle in around 720 kilos because that’s enough to sail the boat and be light for downwind sailing. The boat really does pop out quick, and if you have too much weight it doesn’t pop out as quick. I think we’re at 3800-3900 kilos and I think the 40 is at about 5800 kilos, so that’s about a 40% weight difference with more sail area, more stability.”

Magnitude and Blade have been sailing right in each other’s face. The boats were built so close that the performance is identical, says Smith. “There’s no difference in it so who sails better gets ahead and the other guy has to do something smart to catch up. The 1-D aspect of it and the way the company builds the boats is so accurate - the hulls come out within three kilos of each other, the keels come out within a couple of kilos of each other. So there’s no excuse. Hopefully the package is there for a really nice one design moving forward and people see the advantages of the boat.”

(Approx price tag of the Farr 400? $395k base, with everything and approx.. $500K landed for race sailing - not bad for a carbon boat).

* Check out the BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival: http://www.bvispringregatta.org/bvi/

Wednesday's results: http://result.vg/bvisr/minisite?series_id=15

Pic 1: Dee Smith in Paradise
Pic 2: Blade racing past Necker Island, BVI (photo credit: Cynthia Ross/rossphotographic)
Pic 2: Farr 400 Blade at Bitter End Yacht Club
Pic 3: Farr 400 Magnitude at BEYC