Life on the Cone

I first read about the Cone on Sailing Anarchy, and I was always captivated by the stories that the former owner, Jamie Neill would write about some of the races on the boat. Made for thrilling exploits, and it ultimately was what made us track him down and make an offer on the boat. Fortunately, the Chicago Mac race gave us our first real opportunity to see what this little red rocket can do. I respectfully submit the following for anyone who cares:

It had been a slow, trying race thus far. Footing off the line in slop for 24 hours, alternating between a number one blade (slow) and a Code Zero headsail (less slow). We had spent the last hours short tacking along the beach off Michigan, taking in the scenery and trying to stay in a lift close to shore. Finally, off of Ludington, we saw we could barely carry a kite in less than four knots of wind…the first kite that we had a chance to fly in a major ocean race. On the Cone, the general rule is that if you have your jib up, you're losing the race, spinnaker up, you have a chance at winning the race, but only if you are prepared to hang it out there. Our purple kite is a nice deep reacher, and soon after setting we started to slowly build speed up to windward, and started to climb away and through the J135s and Grand Solei 44's that were next to us. I have to admit we were hoping to have been in the same class as the Melges 32, as I really wanted to see the speed differential between the two boats. Unfortunately, they started ten minutes ahead of us and I figured we would be close around similar speeds upwind, which left me anxiously scanning the horizon for them for the next 24 hours.

Now, as of 6:20 p.m.n Sunday, I was a happy man. No more upwind, wind reading 20 knots from the south in Sheboygan and 10 knots from the SE in the middle of the lake behind us – definite good changes ahead, every boat in site sliding now to our rear, including what we thought was the M32 which I believe was probably right next to us somewhere in the gaggle of boats after all that upwind sailing. About 20 minutes later, we are changing to big whitey. To give you a sense of the size of this kite, when we first took it out of the bag in the North loft, we thought the owner had played a joke on us. This thing just had no business being on a 31 footer. It was only after we took out the next bag, Big Red, its evil, more offshore ready twin brother, that we knew that this was going to be a wild boat. Speed climbing 7/ 9/ 10, two of us on deck, everyone else trying to jam sleep in before the inevitable, wind reading 6 knots apparent. Jamie comes up on deck, tells me I should go get some rest as I will be driving a lot during the night and its apt to get crazy…from the little experience I have with Australians, I know they are prone to understatement and are relatively unfazed by much, so I better take his advice. Crawl back underneath the wings into the stern of the boat affectionately known as the Cave, because there is no going in or out quickly and people are less apt to screw with you when you are tired…daze off.

Awaken to a bolt jammed into my cheek and a roar of water inches through the carbon skin. It's really on. Hoist myself out of the Cave in the pitch dark…Water hitting the slider like a bad thunderstorm on the windshield. There was plenty of water streaming through the separation like those WWII submarine movies. Least we didn’t have to worry about it coming through the sprit like the M32 guys said they did as ours is mounted on deck. Alex cracks the slider amidst a torrent of water and asks me to navigate – I can see now we are south of the Manitous and probably going outside per Jamie’s desire to keep the big kite up. Alex tells me big Red is doing a number and on the SOG I can see we are solidly and consistently going 18 and occasionally higher but says its freaking crazy on deck and everyone is piled aft to keep the bow up.

To navigate on the Cone we run MaxSea, which I am convinced the French designed to screw with the heads of Americans with completely non-intuitive features, especially when the boat is jerking back and forth as the driver fights to keep big Red’s revenge away and the boat going downwind in the pitch darkness. Then it happens. I am thrown across the cabin into the leeward berth as the boat gets absolutely smacked upside the head. Clamber to the high side of the cabin as best I can. Hear later that she got caught to high and did a full on round up, putting one of our Australians in for a full body immersion off the leeward rail. Try to convince Steve to get on the high side to sleep. He lasts two seconds in the Cave before he says, screw that, I would rather be on deck and goes scampering out the hatch to a torrent of water. 30 minutes later and several knockdowns I follow suit. Got to get some air. Crawl to the stern. I am sure you have all seen the Volvo videos.. Water over the bow, water breaking shoulder and head high over the trimmer, a solid foot of water over the boat and her blasting back up and shaking it off like a submarine emergency surfacing as the kite pulls the boat. Take the helm from Jamie after ample warnings, the power of this red kite is amazing. Wants to lift up the boat and take off.

Part Two

Probably the best way to describe it is the kite wants to go downwind and its trying to ditch this pesky little boat thing attached. The Cone doesn’t surf… It planes over the wave tops just bouncing across top to top, and in the dark its hard to see the one that is just big enough to bury the bow and make the boat a fire hose and Jacuzzi at the same time. Finally, we have had enough of the knock downs in the pitch dark and realize for every 20 knot blast we lose some time with the spinnaker flogging trying to correct our past mistakes and put up our reaching blue…which you can see on the pictures on the website is still fairly large, but allows you a lot more control in 20+ without the wipeouts. We decide to wait for first light to try Big Red again (and why not, blue has to be sailed higher and only gives us 15 knots) and when daylight comes we are inbound towards Graves Head trying to outrun a big Coaler that we wanted to cross in front of and we can see some very large chutes behind us rolling down, and water that wind is just totally blowing the tops off. I think something happens on the Cone that makes you funny in the head because looking back at those big sails coming down and knowing that we can go faster with the Big Red, discretion goes out the window and I find myself asking Steve to go get Big Red and lets try again. The wind seems to be cooperating as we dodge squalls and lighting coming down to the water in front of us, and drops probably down beneath twenty.

Up goes big Red, and we start once again to move pretty straight downwind with the pole moved to windward by 40 degrees of so to project it really out there. You could almost hear the wind saying “your bringing that shit back again? Alright, it's on!” because the wind dramatically grew not five minutes after that thing went back up. I believe Natalie J saw us from a distance and noted that their wind speed 35 to 37 knots when we had big Red up. I swear the boat wanted to leave the earth at that moment and we ran her downwind right over the wave tops but inevitably we went from 20+ to a right angle, and back into recovery mode for about five minutes. We all agreed after that on a bargain with Big Red. We wouldn’t put him up in 35 knot puffs if he stopped trying to kill us, and down he went and back came the Blue, which was fast becoming my favorite chute. Unfortunately we have to change bareheaded, and in this time between recovering the red and putting up the blue, one of the faster boats in our class, a J145 Mean Machine came rolling down pretty close and the Coaler we had been chasing ran away. We got the blue kite up, gybed away and when we came back we had put another half mile on the J145. We decided that we were good enough at gybing to keep the kite up through Grays Reef and we could hold the angle after the hard turn to starboard it required.

At this time it was really tough to drive without getting a bucket of water thrown into your eyes from inches away, to the point it snapped your head back. Passing the green, we set up for the bridge that was now coming into site but we kept wiping out trying to hold the blue. We noted all the boats in our stern had now dumped their chutes (probably an idea that was too smart for us) but we throttled down to our southern ocean special (a high cut bright yellow bulletproof kite) and continued to keep 14 to 16 knots and were quickly catching back up to the Coaler which was doing an estimated 13 to 14 knots, and just making sure to keep calling flat spots to work up to our angle and puffs to roll down so that we could keep her on her feet. Unfortunately, we had burned through a set of sheets already during the night which the cover had peeled back on, and went through another again, leaving us with one remaining set. Crossing under the bridge, the breeze freed up a little and slowed, and we went back to the Blue, keeping her until we saw the line. We quickly realized that there were a lot of really tall masts, and that we had probably not done badly. We also thought we heard a GL70 calling in to the dock master, so we felt we might not be that far behind them. Turns out we were the first boat to finish under 52 feet and the third boat under 60 feet to finish the race.

Unfortunately, two Farr 40s crossed the line within enough time after us to finish 15 minutes ahead, which made us question some of our decisions tactically and wonder how much time we spent on our side versus going straight ahead. We were very proud however because we bought this boat to do what it did…go like a bat out of hell and finish ahead of a lot of bigger boats thereby ensuring an earlier time in the drink tent… and knew that ratings wise we would have to really put things up and be on the edge to even have a shot. Final tally, we finished the Mack race 43 hours and 3 minutes after starting, twenty minutes behind Pied Piper, a GL70, and 2.5 hours ahead of the M32 Notorious, meaning that we had put probably two hours ten minutes on them in the last 8 hours downwind, which settled a bet with a certain boat builder made at the Melges worlds back in December. Walking down the dock to catch my plane out at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday, in the distance a boat was coming in after finishing and passing the boat someone shouted through the night “Go The Cone!” Damn straight.

07/27/06