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Mad Max 1997 |
Well we fell off the pace a bit in '96 so I guess it's time to put something back into the boat. Madmax has been a very good boat taking eleven trophies in two and half seasons on her original ten year old bottom and sails, so I'm not complaining. Our #1 had to be repaired three times in '96 because it was so old. Our main had to be recut, it was so blown out. Even with all of this against us we were still competitive. Not first as often, but still in the top three. So for '97 we're stripping the bottom and buying new sails. | |
| Here's Mad Max before we started on the bottom. She had a pretty black bottom, although very rough, with a red stripe. |
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| So what do we expect to gain with all this work? Here are the results of my calculations comparing 1000 grit, 220 grit, and our original 10 year old bottom for various wind speeds. |
We are about 40 hours and $200 into stripping and sanding the
bottom. It's still pretty rough where the epoxy was added (I
didn't know the bottom was faired, nice), but we are already seeing
about a quarter knot improvement over the old bottom paint. I
can hardly wait until spring. When we finish, this boat should
be faster than ever! We are wet sanding to 220 grit
before having it sprayed. Then we'll sand it again to 1000 grit.
With luck we might be finished by the Governor's Cup in August.
At 4 knots True wind At 8 knots True wind Finish Knots sec/nm Finish Knots sec/nm 1000 grit 2.04 1763 1000 grit 4.08 883 220 grit 2.03 1770 220 grit 4.06 887 Old Paint 1.96 1836 Old Paint 3.91 920
At 12 knots True wind At 16 knots True wind Finish Knots sec/nm Finish Knots sec/nm 1000 grit 6.07 593 1000 grit 7.20 500 220 grit 6.05 595 220 grit 7.18 501 Old Paint 5.84 617 Old Paint 6.97 517
| So, we hope to see about 73 seconds per mile improvement in light air and maybe 17 seconds per mile improvement in heavy air. I know, now you're wondering about this program. It produces all kinds of information about ideal crew weight, bottom finish, and even polars, but it's experimental. We're working out the bugs and when it's ready we will make it a Web service. | |
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We got our new sails a couple of weeks before the first race, but couldn't test them until about an hour before the race, ugh. Our sailmaker came out with us and had lots of advice. He decided to recut the Genny and asked us to retune the rigging with more prebend to better fit the main. I managed to get burried on the start, a fatal error on these short courses and we still battled back to second place. Even though we were nowhere near as fast as we could be and the boat was out of balance we showed enough speed to stay between the J/80 and the B/25. |
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So a couple of days later we went out again with the recut genny and retuned rig. Here we are trying the old #3, great wind blowing about 15 knots. The main looks much better and the boat feels faster, but you really can't tell until you race. And we are still sanding the bottom, about 90% done the first phase. Then it gets painted and we start sanding again. |
| July 17, 1997, 10 months later Mad Max finally gets her new bottom just in time for the Governor's Cup. |
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| November and the season's over. How did we do? We sailed in 36 races, took first 17 times and second 6 times, no thirds. Our trophy case now includes: | |
| Havre de Grace Spring Series | 1st place |
| Havre de Grace Spring Invitational | 1st place |
| Glenmar Spring tuneup | 1st place |
| Havre de Grace Summer Series | 1st place |
| Bob McVey | 1st place |
| Havre de Grace Fall Series (N) | 1st place |
| CBYRA Region I PHR-B High Point | 3rd place |
See you in '98!
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