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 SailOvation in Berlin
With great help from the PR agency that managed the Gothaer Cup Event here in Berlin, I got the chance to sail on sailOvation during their German road show. I had the chance to see sailOvation before when she was still at the trailer. The yacht with 9.0 m hull length but 3.43 m beam at the stern looks like a little Open 60. 1,860 kg ready to sail, 650 kg ballast as bulb at the end of a canting aluminum fin with a draft of 2.0 meters and a second fin , 65 m² sail area and a gennaker with 70 m² are impressive details and a good reason for me and a friend to take our cameras and drop in at Saturday morning for a ride, some pics and a report for SA.
Thorsten Höge from Segeln and the skipper of the yacht gave me a warm welcome on board. He and Anne, a really nice woman who has been part of boatbuiling team at the yard, answered all our questions about the boat and showed us what to do while on our trip. First we wanted to know about the PBO shrouds. Thorsten said that the rigging was made by a Dutch company and it works perfect in combination with the carbon mast by Nordic. The rig in total is only 50 kg light but very stiff after the mast is pumped up to a work pressure of 3.5 to by a hydraulic pump. The PBO sounds like a guitar cord when I snapped with my finger on it and I thought it would be go good idea if the skipper always knows where all the knifes are on the boat. First view below deck shows that there is no cruising accommodation now, just some paint in the front, a huge technic pack for the X-keel with powerbank, 2 hydraulic ram system, navigation station with LCD-plotter and in the aft pure carbon, the twin rudder system and the tech unit for X-keel and hydraulic backstay control.
The wind was around 8-12 kts with gusts up to 17 later in the evening. Upwind under full main and genoa we reached 7.5 kt over the ground according to the GPS what is over hull speed. Not really what a sportboat sailor would call on the plane but faster than most other cruiser/racer yacht in that range. The hull is designed to have a minimum wetted surface at 25 degrees heeling and Thorsten said that they reached more than 8 kts at the Baltic during a delivery trip in 14-16 true with the X-keel up to the wind. "Hey, that´s what we should do now because we heel a little too much,“ I said and Thorsten pushed the red button in the cockpit wall. A screaming noise from down the boat was the answer and than the yacht started quickly to lower down the windward side. Some seconds later the heeling was down to 20 degree and the boatspeed increased from 5.8 kts to 6.5 kts. Thorsten said that it takes 15 seconds to cant the keel from side to side. When I asked Anna and Thorsten how the boat hits his polar data they told me that sailOvation has to do a lot of promotion for the Sponsor as today. At the moment the boat is more often on the Autobahn than in water so there was not much time for fine tuning and testing the yacht until now. To please the Gothaer Insurence we sailed up to the start line for the first race. 5 Skippis and a big boat hit the line in time and Thorsten kept the boat clear from trouble. No surprise that sailOvation was first a the windward mark because its boatlength but then the other teams hoisted their assos going for the downwind mark. We hoisted our gennaker too but it took some more time to fly the sail. First time out of his Elvström bag and the gennaker was a big surprise for skipper and crew: Head of the sail roundabout 2 meters below the top of the mast and impossible to pull the halyard any further. While Thorsten calls for more Anna and I recognized that the luff of the gennaker is just 2 meters to short for a masthead asso :-( We dropped the sail far in front of the mark, outfurled the genoa and after rounding the bouy we finished as 3th. For the upcoming races we put a short piece of webbing between the prod and the tack of the gennaker. That works a little bit better but I think someone at the Elvström loft will have some painful minutes when he has to explain why the fuck he as measured that wrong or build a fractional asso for a masthead rig While the next teams switched to the Skippis we tried to push sailOvation to higher speeds. With the asso up we reached 8,7 kn when we canted the ballast keel with its 650 kg bulb to the wind. Because the promo stuff we couldn´t go for 2 mile downwind ride but it was a lot of fun to sail this impressive yacht with Thorsten, Anna and Martin. After 5 more race with the Skippi posse and 3 hours of sailing - including a nice capsize of one Skippi - the RC finished the first half of the regatta and we went back to the harbour. Free BBQ, buffet and beer for all sailors given by the Gothaer made a fine sailing day complete. As resume of the day I could say that I would jump on sailOvation at once if I get the chance again. The boat is fast and it must be a great fun to sail a 30 nm leg downwind in 14-17 kn true with the X-keel canted up. The cockpit is a bit to small and the winches for Genoa and the Asso are not in the right place for racing but do not forget that their aim was a fast cruiser not a pure raceboat. The boat is upwind faster then hull speed, the idea of the X-kell works well but sailOvation will not go into serial production as planed earlier. Cheers, Joachim 08/21/06 |
