BOAT EQUIPMENT AND SAIL REPORT FROM EUROPE
by Chris Chatain

The boats: At Naples there were only 3 or 4 fiberglass boats; the top 10 were all wood. Wooden FOs are simply much easier to get in Europe. Also, though people are willing to invest money on experimental sails, most would prefer to start with
a proven product for the basic hull, i. e., a Bob Hoare. There were also many boats from the German builder Hein, which were certainly as pretty as the Hoare. Reinaldo Conrad, the Russians, and Ben VerHagen sailed Doesburgs; Craig Whit-worth and I had wooden half double bottoms from Ian Peden in  Sydney. The top New Zealand boat, Ron Watson, had a shell that was seven years old -- though the deck and double bottom were more recent. There were no Alpa boats to be seen anywhere in Europe. There is a relatively new Italian fiberglass FD made by CIMA in Rome that features a very workable half double bottom setup, and there were two of these in the Worlds.
None of the boats had any major trouble measuring in. (All the Worlds were measured in completely.) Pattisson' s Super...docious was measured informally with the new full-width templates, and it was perfectly legal. There is much talk about "hull shape" in FDs. The Hoare, Hein, and Australian boats are certainly closer to the tolerance limits in many places than the Doesburg or Plastrend hulls, but it must be remembered that the difference is only a few millimeters.

Sails: Pattisson used the same sails he had at Acapulco (Musto and Banks mains, Tasker and Seahorse jibs, and
Musto or Banks chutes). Oaeger used mostly French Taskers (from the French loft run by Bertrand Cheret). Musto used Musto; Conrad used 4. suits of Mustos in every combination possible -- he himself admitted to having too many sails; Whitworth used Whitworth; Watson used Pederson sails. The newer Musto spinnakers are perhaps not as flat as before. He uses American sailcloth now and they look much better. Whitworth made some fuller-than-normal sails for himself and for me; his standard Australian Cut was much too flat. Pederson sails are rather popular in Europe. I also saw some local European sailmakers represented, so people don't really feel that one has to buy from the "English Establishment" to go fast.
My own thoughts about the sails that Pattisson used, with which he was as fast (rarely) or faster (usually) than everyone else are these: his jib was full and his main medium-to-flat, draft set on a stiff spar. He would change his sails for heavier wind, but the jib would still be full. It would have the draft oriented differently, however. His heavy air mainsail was primarily just heavier cloth, and perhaps just a bit flatter. His spinnakers were no extreme shape, just standard 3/4 ounce Banks or Musto.

Spars: Procter has a third method now for tapering the head of the B section. All three types of tapers were at Naples, but I couldn't see any clear difference in the bending charact-eristics. Pattisson, of course, had his Alspar section from Australia. Rather than call it an Alspar, it should be called a custom made spar, for the Alspar people themselves couldn't make another like it. It measured in about 2 lbs. heavy, and though the top was very finely tapered, the total spar bend was a very smooth curve. He sailed with the spar slightly stiffer all around than a standard B section. Nearly all the boats, with or without diamonds, had a lever or cam fitting so that the mast brace at deck level could be controlled by the helmsman. The single spreader rigs usually had their spreaders slightly too long (2 inches) and permanently fixed a little forward.

One of the more interesting aspects of the regatta was the evenness of completely different rigs. Three boats in the top six (Musto, Whitworth and Watson) had fully standard deHavilland spars, with diamonds and halyards external. Tom Allen and I were the only ones without diamonds on our deHavilland spars. (The Australians said that it could not be done.) The boats with diamonds had them adjustable by the helmsman, and the spreaders were completely in line with the shrouds. The diamonds were straight athwartships, not angled forward.

All the boats except the Australians would fix the jib clew, and then adjust the jib halyard and shrouds to achieve the proper trim. (Loosening the halyard and tightening the shrouds will free the leach.) Most rigs showed some con-cern about windage; many shrouds were fixed internally, and there were some very pretty aerodynamic spreader shapes.

Incidentally, it is no longer legal to shackle the mainsail up; the crew in the boat must be able to lower it while at sea. Also, Pattisson was not using the electric relative winddirection indicator that he had at Acapulco, which has also been outlawed. Most boats used as stiff a boom as possible; the foot of a modern FD main is too full to be flattened by boom bend.

Boards and Rudders: Pattisson and a few of the others showed a great interest in centerboards and rudders. He measured in 3 boards and 4 rudders, each with a slightly different shape. The centerboard he used the entire regatta weighed 9 pounds. His tiller was permanently fixed to his rudder, and the entire assembly was amazingly light. His rudders varied as to thickness and the angle at which the blade was raked back.

Tom Allen was the only boat that sailed with less than the maximum rudder area in the water. No one sailed with the rudder angled back from the vertical more than 30 degrees; most had them straight down most of the time.

Many different materials were used for the centerboard stripping; stiff mylar, Dacron, pure and reinforced rubber, and plastic. Pattisson reportedly had some sort of foam inside the box. Whitworth had a "plug" that he would fill the slot with behind the centerboard when going upwind -- but he had to pull it out to raise the board.

Equipment Layout: Most boats were built around their system for changing the jib lead. Pattisson had a separate "string" for each shroud and the jib halyard. The other extreme was John Sully of South Africa, who raked his whole rig forward or back with one crank at the skipper's end of the boat. Nearly all the fittings were custom made. That was true also of the deck-level mast cams.

Main travellers were varied, but all were very workable. The "best" systems were those which allowed the slide to be easily brought up to weather. All the German-made boats had the traveller in a concave arc -- the middle was lower than the sides in order to encourage the slide to move out more easily. Pattisson and most of the fleet had centre main cams.

Spinnaker sheets were all under the deck. Pattisson had an intricate but workable system for raising and lowering the pole from where he sat.Whitworth had the distinction of the only boat without a spinnaker launching tube. Many of the boats had a very useful hook on the underside of the boom about two feet in from the end, to hold the chute sheet up and out on quartering reaches. Whitworth had the only boat with the jib sheets above the deck. Most of the Hoare boats had cams on the leeward side, but also popular were clams on the windward side. A few boats had sheaves that could be moved up and down, but not under load. And on many boats the lead position could be moved inboard, but as far as I saw no one did this, even on the days with relatively flat water.

Compasses are standard equipment on FDs in Europe. The flat-case, lightweight plastic ones made by Suunto in Finland are very popular. Pattisson uses a pair of these, one mounted by each shroud.

Tactics: We thought that starting was the easiest part of the race in Europe, in many respects. Most importantly, all the boats seemed to realize that clear air was essential, so the fleet spread open quickly. Even if we had a 2nd or 3rd row start we would be at least a little clear very soon.

Pattisson, Whitworth, and several other good boats favored dipping down from above the line, especially on the first start. (There was usually at least one general recall.) With the leeward end favored it was likely that the "good" boats would be at least a third of the way back up the line from the pin,Windward end starts were the most difficult, but still more likely than not the fleet leaders wouldn't be fighting for the best start.

It is very difficult to identify what technique permits some of the boats to tack so fast. It involves not only the crew going from wire to wire and trimming the jib quickly; also important is the wave pattern that the boat turns in, the way it is rocked and turned by the helmsman, the course that the boat ends up on, and the way the main is trimmed throughout.

I've already remarked about main travellers being up to weather often. Pattisson worked his constantly, working through the waves with it as much as with his rudder. Depending on relative fullness of the main, different boats would be carrying their travellers in different positions. In order to maintain a "twist" in a full mainsail (or on a stiffer spar) the slide was almost always to weather, with the sheet relatively eased. The things to be watched were the set of the leach and the position of the boom relative to the center of the boat, The reaching legs most of all showed the practice and "time-in-the-boat" edge that Pattisson had. Particularly in the semi -planing conditions, he would hit the proper trim for his boat very quickly and be off. It was simply practice.

We never had the difficult, lighter conditions, so I can't comment on Pattisson's downwind tacking abilities, Most of the boats kept their crew centered fore and aft, but as far on opposite sides as possible. Crew weight would be shifted quickly, mainsails pumped once, rudders flipped once or twice, all to initiate planing or a long surge. They were very effective techniques, taking a good deal of concentration.

The well-practiced boat could gain significantly rounding the ma rks, too. The last part of the reaches were sailed to provide a clear air position as soon as the mark was rounded; important both at the 2nd and 3rd marks. It was much easier to concentrate on boatspeed on the 2nd and 3rd windward legs, chiefly becuase of the much simplified tactical situation.

The long runs featured some speed differentials that were hard to analyze. At Naples it was usually 15 knots of wind with only small chop, so so downwind tacking to speak of, but still some boats could easily sail by others. Possible major causes would be the smoothness of the bottom (not the type of paint), the rudder shape, steering technique, the centerboard stripping, and weight distribution within the boat. The sails seemed to be too similar to matter.

Typical races sailed in a relatively steady wind would show few positions changed after the first beat, until the last half of the beat to the finish. My explanation would be that in the final minutes of the race the tactical situation becomes much more important -- and accordingly, some people lose that little extra concentration on boat speed that others (Musto for one) could maintain. That is the biggest lesson to be learned. The boat must be kept moving fast through the water at all times.