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December 22, 2009
Christmas Optimisation
I had never run any trial rating certificates before and thought that it would be a good idea to see if any rating optimisation was possible. Having spoken with sail makers and now established what is possible I have been busy purchasing Christmas pressies for Ninjod.
The plan for the new year is to run a shorthanded IRC certificate and a fully crewed IRC certificate. In both cases the jumpers are coming off and the mast head kite is being put into storage. The cost of these items in terms of rating could never be justified against their use.
For fully crewed racing the water ballast is being dropped and we are going back to fractional symmetric spinnakers.
For shorthanded and solo stuff Ninjod will be configured as a bowsprit only boat. A new Selden on deck retractable carbon bowsprit will be fitted sometime between January and March 2010. To make use of the sprit new sails and hardware have been purchased. A Code Zero, and larger Asym will both make use of a Facnor FX2500 furling system. My existing smaller and heavier Asym will run off a tack line from the sprit. To make all of this work properly a new 2:1 halyard will be installed .
The result of all of this is a reduction in IRC rating from 1.024 to 1.012.
Posted by ninjod at December 22, 2009 08:49 AM