Alan said ‘talk to Jon Fitzgerald, he does the main and is very knowledgeable regarding tuning and set up, Jon knows more about Sigmas than anyone else and certainly more than I do’.
SOME NOTES ON JON FITZGERALDS SAIL ON SHILLELAGH.
As observed by; Dermod Baker, Paul Barrington, Ben Beach, Tom Duggan, Noel Kidney, Johnnie Phillips.
When we first stepped on Shillelagh we were faced with a number of puzzles and conundrums both with regard to rigging, tuning, sailing and boat handling. Some we have solved and some are still with us. The previous owners had it set up for long cruises and passage races including the Fastnet, round the cans was low on their list of priorities.
Tim Goodbody kindly gave us all the most up to date numbers and measurements, but try as we might we couldn’t achieve them. When one number was right, all the rest went out of sync.
|
It was decided to try and pick the brains of the fastest boat in the Sigma
world. We phoned Alan Milton of Pepsi, then, as now, UK national champion.
Alan said ‘talk to Jon Fitzgerald, he does the main and is very knowledgeable regarding tuning and set up, Jon knows more about Sigmas than anyone else and certainly more than I do’.
|
|
| Pepsi |
I rang Jon and found him most helpful and willing to pass on tips on all aspects of tuning and sailing. After a particularly galling race at the top end of the no 1 Genoa wind speed, with the entire class queuing up to pass us, I asked Jon, ‘ Is there any chance you might come over some weekend and show us how to really sail this thing? Yes he said, he’d be delighted to, but a window of opportunity didn’t materialise last season. In August this year I rang him and he said ’Pepsi isn’t sailing in September, I can come over for your Nationals’. We accepted with alacrity.
Along the way we found out:
Some of the better things we did;
During a conversation with Jon Fitzgerald, he mentioned a design fault that occurs in some Sigmas, that result’s in the mast step sinking and needing further chocking between the top of the post and the mast step. He said you can put a straight edge along the mast step deck mount. If it has dished downward you need to expose the top of the post from down below and glass in a chock. Although we do have a slight dish in the mast step area, we found there was some newish glass fibre work done round the top of the post. A call to the previous owner elicited the pleasant information that the problem had been found and had been addressed by a Hamble boatyard.
Jon Fitzgerald duly arrived, and sailed with us in the championships. We rapidly accepted all his suggestions and hung on his every word as finishing gunfire began to make us all slightly deaf. My only regret was that we hadn’t any 16kt winds where our greatest difficulty usually lies. Still five bangs and a beep were gratefully received.
Here are some of the things he did and said, as observed by the crew of Shillelagh, which I hope will be of benefit to many in the class. We haven’t all sailed together since the championships so there may be further additions and addenda.
Jon arrived quite late on the day before the championships from the sad occasion of a funeral and wake of a well-known sigma sailor. Ben Johnson (White Lightening) who had tragically fallen overboard from one of the British Steel round the world Yachts in Sweden and Jon had the sad task of reading the eulogy at the burial service and wake.
We arrived in DunLaoghaire bright and early on Friday morning, first gun minus three hours. He stepped on board and looked up the mast. We told him we had about 6’’ of pre bend and Loose gauge 43 on the outers and 42 on the inners, and we had about the 43 inches ‘magic’ forestay measurement. He checked them anyway and said that’s about OK, but your spreaders aren’t right, have you got a bosuns chair and a set of allen keys? These were produced and he set off up the mast a bit faster than the guys could winch him up, glances were exchanged all round. He undid the allen screw in the spreader tip (whose existence was news to many) and kicked the spreaders upwards. When he came down he said ‘I like to see the spreaders bisect the angle of the outer shrouds at the spreader and be exactly even’. He next called for the Sigma checklist and proceeded to check that we had everything on it. Then he filled a sail bag with everything on board that was not on it. It seemed that everyone who had ever stepped on board had discarded an article of clothing (‘ladies under clothing?!…Never! Well what are they then’! ) The sailbag was soon filled, and fathoms of soggy rope followed. The boat floated higher by the minute.
He took the pins out of the backstay bottle screw and loosened it. He said: ‘you’re bottom wire backstay strop is too long ‘have you got a smaller shackle’, one was produced. We had added two purchases to the back stay blocks; he removed one of them to improve the ease of adjustment and freedom of movement. He tied the backstay beam loosely to the pushpit with thin shock cord to prevent it flopping into the cockpit. He said, turning the backstay bottle screw ‘this is usually the only thing I adjust before or during a race, I mostly leave the mast pre bend about what it is now’ (about 6 inches).
He had taken off the lazy sheets, ‘we don’t use them, we prefer to use Down F****rs’. These it turned out were our spinnaker sheet tweekers. ‘Yours are in the wrong place, they need to be much further forward’ he said. They were re roped with a longer one-piece continuous rope and placed much further forward. Their new position was just behind the second stanchion from the bow. Their unusual name, he told us, was to avoid confusion. Various people used different technical names. On Pepsi everyone knows what the Down F*****rs are. The ‘ON’ position was just above the dip in the stanchion wire, rather than our ‘ON’ position, which was down at the toe rail. The sheet always had a certain amount of ‘ON’ except when the wind went forward and the pole approached the forestay.
Next the Bridge Deck was called for and fitted in place. This has never seen the light of day on Shillelagh and puzzled us until the reason was explained. The bridge Deck allows the tackers to move quickly across the boat while tacking. They don’t have to step down and then step back up when crossing.
Tacking, it was explained, involves one ‘Fine’ and one ‘Coarse tacker. Looking at Paul Barrington he said ‘You’re Coarse’ and at Johnnie Phillips ‘you’re Fine’ Fine sits next to the main sheet man and Coarse sits forward of him on the rail.
Before the tack the new winch is loaded with two turns (more on this later). Fine goes down and takes the winch handle out of the leeward winch and places it in the new winch (now the high side). Fine then goes down to the leeward side, uncleats the old Genoa sheet, holds it and shouts ‘Ready’. As the boat goes through the wind, Fine lets go and flicks the sheet off the old winch. Coarse has come in quarter way, picks up the tail of the new sheet, he turns and pulls the jib in, not slowly but not too fast, certainly not ahead of the boat. He passes Fine heading down to the new leeward side, but he still holds the tail. Fine takes the tail from Coarse and grinds in to about 6 inches. Coarse is now on the rail. Then as the boat speed picks up Fine puts two more turns on the winch and grinds in to the type of setting the Helmsman wants. The delay in putting on the extra two turns means that fine has to stop winching, put on the two turns which automatically ensures the sail is not over sheeted as the boat comes out of a tack. About 5 inches (off the spreaders) for footing and about 2 inches for pointing is the Fitzgerald rule of thumb. During this ‘ballet’ the presence of the bridge deck makes life for all concerned easier, but care is needed not to sheet in too early.
As the wind got lighter over the weekend we spent more time footing than pointing. Point in a header and foot in a lift was the JF dictum. Also there was no backstay used when pointing and a little added to allow footing without heeling. The backstay has little or no function in the control of forestay / Genoa luff tension, but is in fact the mainsail power controller. It opens and closes the mainsail leech. At the start JF put on some backstay to open the mainsail leech so as to avoid the boat broaching up at the gun as the mainsail was sheeted in, thus assuring speed off the line. As soon as the boat was up to expected levels of speed the backstay tension was released. Backstay tension was increased for mark rounding to give the helmsman better control in steering the boat, also in pre start manoeuvres. The mainsheet car position was always to weather with the boom dead middle and the fine tune used to control the main leech. Tight for pointing, off a bit for footing. Occasionally when I called a lot of weather helm when footing. The car might be moved about 3 inches down the track, but came back at the first opportunity. The outhaul was eased when going down wind, quite a lot as the wind got lighter. Not much Vang was used at anytime. The jib cars were showing four holes all weekend.
Downwind our much-vaunted Mumm30 hoist and drop through the fore hatch was thrown out on the basis that keeping weight out of the front of the boat was deemed more important. A lot of leeward weight was used on the run particularly when a bit of rolling occurred. Rolling was deemed slow and not tolerated. On the last race when the wind was very light Tom Duggan and Noel Kidney were dispatched down below to sit on the leeward bunk where their merry chortling at this unusual (for us) move, contrasted strangely with the tense atmosphere on deck as every zephyr was sought and run down. Of course as Noel put it, dispatching the most talented and knowledgeable members of the crew down below in light weather is very fast!
Another JF dictum that changed the way we sail the boat is the manner of helming. I sail up every wave and down the back of it ducking and weaving in a manner that I thought was fast.
‘DB, lock the tiller ‘I was told’ you have too much tiller movement, a moving tiller is slow’. I found this difficult to achieve but as the weekend went on I could see the truth of it in the speed we achieved up wind, with the opposition getting smaller. A side effect of this was the constant rattling of the rudder stock bearing that had obviously not been changed since the boat was built. I hadn’t noticed it as I sawed my way across the bay for the last two years. Fitting interference fit bearings are now on the ‘must do’ list this winter.
Another useful communication shortcut downwind - the helmsman reaches over the lifelines and lightly rests his fingers on the spinnaker sheet in front of the block. He can feel the pressure going off as quickly as the sheet hand can, and is able to head up before he has to be told to do so, this is useful in light weather.
Jon Fitzgerald’s visit left us with a lot to think of in terms of set up, tuning and boat handling. I hope the class will find the above helpful. It’s a lot more fun to go fast and the old adage that boat speed makes for tactical genius seems to have some truth in it. Our boat is on the Marina and if anyone wants to look at the way JF set it up please step on board…