The Crew of Black Cat for Cape to Rio

 Our crew for the 2014 Cape to Rio Race is mostly the same as we had for the 1996 running of this race. Here are bios for two of the crew.

Gavin Muller

Gavin Muller was 21 years old on the 1996 Race. He was the baby of the crew by a long way and received the brunt of the good-natured insults and joking on the voyage from the rest of us. He took it all in very good spirits, was a great crewman to have with us and proved to be very capable in all aspects of sailing our boat at high speed across the Atlantic.

Now, 18 years later, Gavin is a much more respectable age. At least he is now more than half my own age. Gavin cant have had any permanent damage from all of our ribbing on that race because it was he that put the thought in front of me to get the 1996 crew together again for the 2014 race. Wonderful idea, Gavin.

He obviously has a good sense of the ridiculous. The bio that he sent me begins with "I started sailing quite late in life at the age of 14". Heck, most sailors wish that they could have started sailing at that age instead of 30, 40 or even 60 years old. When you are 21 then 14 must be relatively late in life. After his late start in sailing, Gavin hasnt wasted his time and has accomplished much. His achievements include:-

Sank an Optimist on the start line of his first Interschools Regatta.
Rose to captain of his Bishops High School Sailing Club
Was part of the youngest crew to sail the Cape to Rio Race, in 1993
Crewed on "Black Cat" in Cape to Rio Race 1996
Member of line-honours crew in St Helena Race 1996 and sailed return to Cape Town.
Achieved Yachtmaster Offshore in 1997, with better grades than he managed in school.
Sailed his 2nd St Helena Race in 1998 and return voyage to Cape Town.
Moved to England Feb 1999, where he still lives.
Sailed 4 Fastnet Races and all qualifying races.
Sailed 7 Cowes Week Regattas.
Sailed 8 Round the Island Races (Isle of Wight).

Gavin is married to Nicole and they have two young children, Alice and George. He is Head of Operations at one of the most prestigious catering companies in London, so I guess that qualifies him to serve us some imaginative high-class meals in the middle of the South Atlantic.

Gavin with wife Nicole and children, Alice and George.

Gavin in Solent sailing garb.

Sean Collins

In my 60 years of sailing, Sean is the one who has sailed more miles with me than anyone else. We always clicked together on boats and have confidence in each other doing the right thing when needed, including to extricate us from some silly situation into which I have put us.

Sean first sailed at about 7 years old, with an uncle who owned an Enterprise dinghy. The bug bit and he broadened his sailing experiences with the Sea Scouts. Seans first offshore experience came in 1976 with his uncle, sailing from Durban to Cape Town on a newly-launched 45ft ferro-cement cruiser. Continuing further on the long-term cruise was thwarted by the need to finish schooling.

Sean is a surfer and spent a few years sailing Hobie cats before buying his own first offshore boat. This was a 28ft plywood double-ended ketch named "Elise". After breaking the mizzen mast she had lee-helm problems and that was what brought Sean and me together for our long association. He commissioned me to redesign the rig as a cutter. He sold "Elise" after he started crewing for me on my CW975 "Concept Won" sometime later.

Sean estimates that he has sailed roughly 10,000 sea miles with me on "Concept Won" and "Black Cat". He was my chosen partner whenever available for the double-handed races and regattas at Royal Cape Yacht Club and Hout Bay Yacht Club. He sailed with me on numerous Double Cape Races, Telkom Regattas, Old Brown Table Bay Regattas, Hout Bay Admirals Regattas, Hout Bay Double Regattas and the weekend and Wednesday night racing at RCYC, as well as the 1996 Cape to Rio Race.

Sean was in the crew of "Black Cat" right from the start, long before she even hit the water. He spent many weekends helping with building her, much of it doing a sterling and nasty job of epoxy coating and fibreglassing the joints of the drinking water tanks, to ensure that they would not fail us in mid-ocean.

Sean moved to England in 1998, with wife Lanesse (now ex-wife) and three daughters. There they spent time sailing the estuaries of the Thames and acquiring the new skills of safely navigating large tides and strong currents. Eventually they bought "Vortex", a Nicholson 35, which Sean refurbished for family cruising. In 2004 they headed South to find sunshine and spent 16 months cruising to the Canaries via France, Spain and Portugal. From there they all flew back to settle back in Cape Town. A year later Sean and his nephew double-handed "Vortex" to Cape Town via Cape Verde, Brazil and Tristan da Cunha.

Bad economic times in RSA resulted in Sean working for a few years in Bahrain, where he joined the Bahrain Yacht Club to keep in sailing. Back in RSA again, work commitments keep him away from home but he gets back to Cape Town regularly. Most of his sailing is currently  on inland waters, where he is an instructor with the youth sail training programme at Mountain Yacht Club on Ebenezer Dam.

Sean with Lanesse and daughters Abbey, Kelsey & Megan

Sean on "Vortex" at Hout Bay Yacht Club.

Gavin and Sean, I look forward to sailing with both of you again.



  

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Bolger Cat Yawl Romp

20 years ago my wife Rachel , our young daughters Kalessin, Lillian and I sailed into St Augustine Florida and anchored off the town marina. We had just sailed up from the Bahamas and were looking for a quite town with some nice architecture , a good school and a  place to live at anchor. 20 years ago this was a simple town. The schools were good and for Kalessins first year of school it was a short walk from the anchorage. We could use the marina dock to tie up our dinghy, get showers, do laundry , secure our bycycles and all for $115.00 a month. A nice deal. 

I got a job right away at Luhrs Mainship in their R&D dept building boat plugs. Every thing was within biking distance. This was when I first spotted the Romp in my creek roaming evenings. 

I had watched one of these boats get part way built years before in Key Largo at Blue Fin marina by a guy named John Connelly if I remember right. He got the hull stripped up and the deck on and then the project ended and he and the boat dissapeared.

I have never sailed on a Romp but this hull is similar to Bolgers other design the Mannatee. Both have firm bilges with long straight keels. The Mannatee "Alert" tracked very well . I felt that in going to weather the mizzen played a roll in keeping this boat on course by dialing in the weather helm. I did not like the way Alert felt at sea in tacking and so forth with this long straight keel hull shape. Was kinda like sailing a huge Whitehull dinghy in regard to the bow being deep and no rocker to the long keel.

Of course Jim Melcher sailed the Alert across the North Atlantic to Ireland single handed at the age of 74 and took her through out the canals of Europe  over many years logging over 55,000 miles over there. This does not include the sea miles he put in her sailing in the Pacific , and Caribbean seas.

My guess another 40,000 or so miles. 

It all comes back to... People sail boats , not boats sail people.

So to all you Bolger dreamers .... Heres the Original Romp waiting for you to rescue her and take her away from her most likly death. 

The owner said he wanted $15,000.00 three years ago. Romp has some rot in the deck. The mainmast is made of fiberglass. The hull is cored with Airex or Kledgecell and glassed over well.

The interior is classic Bolger, that means all small single bunks so no sleeping with your better half.

I dont think Bolger was into snuggling.

Lots of open space to fill in with lockers and stuff to go afar.

This is way cheaper than building . The ballast alone is worth a third of the price. 

So someone get going !!!!!

Lots of no trespassing signs and no one in sight so I only got this far last week.

Romp needs you. The name is on the stern. This mizzen was up three years ago.

Good luck !

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Cape to Rio 2014 Black Cat Preparations

Start day for Cape to Rio 2014 draws near, now only 4 days away. Preparation of our radius chine plywood Didi 38 "Black Cat" continues. Most of the big jobs have been completed but somehow the list of smaller ones never ends.

Earlier this week we were able to go sailing for a few hours to try some of the new sails, all made by the North Sails Cape Town loft. The mainsail and jib are both carbon and are a real treat to use. They set beautifully to the designed shape and are very stable. There was a bit of swell running and I found the sails to be easier to helm to than the previous laminated Dacron sails, with the sail shape not changing from surging in the swell as happens with a softer sail.

North carbon jib. Sexy see-through clothing.

Photographic conditions were not great, so these are not the best of photos. They show the new carbon mainsail and jib. For purposes of optimising our IRC rating for the race, sail area has been reduced in the headsails, with our big (and very old) Genoas with large overlap gone for good, replaced by a jib that hardly overlaps the mast, does not foul the spreaders or shrouds and is very quick to tack. It also sheets very close and allows "Black Cat" to now sail very close to the wind. This will be a great sail any time that we have to go to windward.

North carbon mainsail

The reduction in headsail area is somewhat compensated by the larger roach of the new mainsail. The larger roach and stiffer fabric means that there is a lot more conflict between backstay and mainsail, so she now has a flicker on the backstay, which you can see on the photos, to lift the top of the backstay away from the sail to allow it to pass through.

The new Code zero has massive area and showed itself to be surprisingly close-winded also, able to sheet to a very close reach, almost a beat. With large shoulders, it is also very stable and much easier to steer to than a conventional spinnaker. This sail rates as an asymmetrical spinnaker rather than a Genoa, allowing us to sail to windward with a spinnaker in light to moderate breezes.

I have written previously about some of our crew for this race. Without bio info from the other two, here is as much info as I can give for them from my own knowledge.

Dave Immelman is the normal skipper of "Black Cat" and has graciously moved into the navigator slot to allow me to come in as skipper. Dave is very experienced in competitive sailing, having crewed in the South African "Shosholoza" Americas Cup Team, a Volvo Ocean Race campaign and extensive racing in South Africa, UK and the Med. Dave is very tough as well, having rowed 3000 miles single-handed across the North Atlantic Ocean. It was intended to be a double-handed voyage but his partner took ill and was taken off the boat very soon after the start and Dave decided to continue by himself.  We will have many interesting stories to swap on this next voyage. Dave is married to Susan, an award-winning seafood chef. They have a daughter of 5 and another arriving while we are mid-Atlantic.

Dave Immelman at the time of his rowing voyage.

Adrian Pearson is the owner of "Black Cat". He was my partner in her from during construction through to 2000, when he took over full ownership. Adrian loves to sail on her but does not often skipper her, preferring to hand over that job to someone with more experience. Not that Adrian lacks ocean experience, he was in my crew for the 1996 and 2000 Cape to Rio Races, crewed on her for the return from Rio in 2000 and did many coastal regattas and races with me around the Cape of Good Hope. Adrian is a retailer in Johannesburg, co-owner of a large grocery store.  He is currently unattached and has two sons and a daughter.

Dont forget that you will be able to track our progress across the Atlantic. Go to the official race website Cape to Rio 2014 and click on the tracking link at upper right of the screen.

I should be able to make one more post before we sail away. I hope to make an occasional post while on the water but cant guarantee that it will happen. Our Internet connection will be via costly satellite phones so has to be used sparingly. We will have a separate boat blog for the race and I will post the address of that blog in my next post here.

Read about our designs at http://dixdesign.com/.

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Key West to the Dry Tortugas in a Marsh Cat

Two of Dorymans friends from Maryland completed a trip from Key West to the Dry Tortugas at the end of 2012. This is the second time Mike Wick and Kevin MacDonald have made this voyage, so theyre seasoned. The impressive thing is how they did it in a fifteen foot Marshcat catboat! The Dry Tortugas are seventy miles West of Key West, Florida.

Mike Wick tells the story of himself and Kevin in Little T :

Second trip to the Tortugas with a stop at Fort Jefferson
By Mike Wick

I drove to Kevin’s house on Friday night so we could make an early start the next morning. We left Frederick, Md., at 5:00 am Saturday December 8, to beat the traffic around Washington D.C. We drove south 1,240 miles pretty much non-stop and arrived at Oceangate Marina at 2:00 am Saturday and grabbed some sleep in the boat. After waking we settled with the marina and had a quick breakfast. The television told us that the weather window was good for another go, so, before 9:00 am Sunday, we launched and were off. The harbormaster was a little skeptical about the passage but when we told him about the February trip, he just shrugged and said "Timing is everything". He’s right. We were under pressure of time this vacation and had planned for a figure-eight loop around the lower keys, but, really, both of us were primed to go do the Dry Tortugas passage again. As long as we had the weather we really wanted to repeat our February passage.

In a light breeze from the northeast, we rounded Key West and were swept down on Kingfish Shoal by a strong south going current. We just barely missed the shoals around Cut "A" range markers. By reading the water we worked north enough to fetch the gate south of Mule Key that begins the Lakes Passage. There’s a lot of shallow water on Lakes Passage. It is fairly uniform in depth except for Gates off Mule Key, Archer Key, and Boca Grande. The channels are well marked and easy to see. There was quite a crowd at the protected beach on the northwest corner of Boca Grande Key. Most were high speed flats fishing boats nosed up on the beach.
We entered Boca Grande Channel in a light easterly with deceptive visibility. We approached Gull Rocks and were within a mile and a quarter of the Marquesas without seeing any sign of them although they are quite large and high. Then the fog lifted and there was land everywhere to the north of us. There are random brain coral bricks about a half-mile off the Marquesas, so it is good to keep a sharp lookout and maintain some offing. There is a grand archipelago of mangrove islands surrounding a large well protected Mooney Harbor. We were warned about mosquitoes but there is no fresh water, so no bugs. In fact, in two trips we’ve found no bugs anywhere.
It is tempting to anchor inside Mooney Harbor but we were anxious about the second leg, so we anchored outside just to the west. This provided good protection from the usual easterly winds. Key West is far enough south so the tradewinds are well established. The winds vary from northeast to southeast most of the time. We ate quickly and turned in. Kevin said "Whoever wakes first wakes the other. "

It was a beautiful night with great stars. Monday morning I woke first at 2:30 am and then woke Kevin. We had anchored a little too close to land and at low tide had some trouble with grounding on our way out. A nine mile flasher on Cosgrove Shoal guided us to the deeper water and we were on our way in a light easterly. I was steering by Orion to keep us south of the Quicksand but a strong set to the north brought us back on the shallow bank. At one point, I heard the tide rushing over a shoal spot but our catboat had plenty of water everywhere on that bank.

The problem was that the Quicksand is a bombing and strafing range for the Navy boys at Pensacola. There are unlit, rusty targets at random places throughout. In February, we had found some in the dark and again, just at dawn, I saw unlit and twisted pilings close onboard to starboard. Sunrise is always is a comfort, after an early start.

It was a beautiful day for the big push. Wind was from the southeast and mild. Rebecca Shoal was abeam at 9:30 am. We were more than halfway to our destination. At 11 am we sighted Yankee Freedom III, the daily ferry from Key West, passing to the north of us.

We had both my Garmin 76 Cx and Kevin’s more basic GPS. Either set had plenty of information for this kind of trip. We just kept adjusting for tide and observed the set on passing crab pots and the plot on the little screen. By 12:30 pm we had made landfall on Fort Jefferson, the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key, then east and Hospital Keys. By 1:30 pm we anchored off the dinghy beach in the Garden Key anchorage.

Being a bit tired of our own cooking we rushed for our wallets and waded ashore to buy our lunch from the ferry. We had experienced a fifty mile passage at 4.8 knots. We were glad to have left early and were halfway on our journey.

In the afternoon, we wandered around in the cool shade of the fort, talking to tourists, the rangers, and stretching our legs. One ranger remembered us from our February visit and was interested in general about small boat passages. We then waded back aboard and anchored for a night of wonderful star gazing at the anchorage. Jupiter was close to the Pleiades.

On these trips we always seem to be able to sleep from dusk to dawn, even if it is more than twelve hours. We woke in the morning to find a lovely reaching wind. Feeling the pressure of time we turned to each other and said, "YEP". By 8:00 am we were on our way again. When you are on top of the mountain you shouldn’t turn down a gift from the gods.
It turned out not to be quite the gift we hoped for though. A beautiful broad reach near hull speed brought us most of the way to Rebecca Shoal. The breeze fizzled and leaving us becalmed near Halfmoon Shoal in the late afternoon. We tried our best but knew we had to use the outboard and adjust course north in order to come in on the Marquesas from the north.


That was the best nighttime approach and we aimed to snug in for the night on the northwest corner of the Islands. It was well after dark when we sighted the one second flasher on the tower between New Ground and the flasher on Ellis Rock. We would use this as a turning mark for our approach. We were anxious to anchor for the night with lightning all around us but we had to make a careful approach to avoid various obstructions that were on the chart, such as submerged platform ruins and a mile wide circle of pilings. We got closer to the flasher on Ellis Rock but it wouldn’t appear.

We were within a quarter mile of our waypoint and still couldn’t see the light, so we decided that it was time to believe either that the buoy had been struck or the light had failed. I couldn’t see to steer, (I am scheduled for cataract surgery in a month), and so I held the flashlight and had Kevin steer first east along a latitude line then south along a longitude line to clear all the charted obstructions. Even with this precaution, I still sighted two large rusty pylons close to port, though Kevin couldn’t find them with his light. Still, I knew they were there and they made me anxious. I got my training as navigator of a deep draft navy freighter and this one foot draft catboat was a different kind of piloting altogether.

We were at anchor and in our sleeping bags well into the night, when I asked Kevin what the time was. His reply was" nine thirty." It didn’t seem like nine thirty. Next morning, Wednesday, I woke with the calm of dawn and after looking around called Kevin. No pylons, no pilings, no flasher but a beautiful double rainbow to the west. No rain but high humidity. My obstructions had disappeared with the night but Kevin forgave my anxiety. The strenuous part of our trip was over.

We caught a whisper of a southeasterly breeze through an intricate channel into Mooney Harbor. We sailed as far as we could around the harbor, a chance to breathe now that we are down off the mountain. Once we had found all the parts of that sector that we could float in, we went outside and found a nice beach to swim and explore off the boat for a bit. In the interim, the wind had picked up rapidly and we used the chance to tuck in a single reef on the beach. A fast crab across Boca Grande Channel brought us in a little north of Boca Grande.

We found the lakes passage a little too shallow for upwind work with any centerboard, so we ran off to the north and searched for an anchorage. First we tried Cottrell Key, off the Northwest Channel leading into Key West, but there were dive boats and mooring balls. So we figured they didn’t want any catboats interfering with their diving. We crossed the middle ground and found a nice little anchorage just off Fleming Key.

We had company but nowhere as much company as you would find there in February when the snowbirds had had more time to really flock south. The insurance companies insist they have to stay north of Norfolk until the first of November to keep them away from hurricanes. After Sandy it seems as if that wasn’t the right plan this year. There is something to be said for having boats that can easily be trailered instead.

Thursday brought a calm morning for inspecting the fleet in Frankfort Bight, and a run to the truck for some changes of food and clothing. Then we took advantage of the brisk norther to run east along the weather shore of Stock Island, Boca Chica, Geiger Key and into Saddlebunch Harbor. The wind was quite stiff and Saddlebunch offered little protection from a north wind but we finally found a good lee up next to the Route 1 Bridge tucked under Snake Key. There was traffic noise but no waves. We slept fine.

Friday was overcast and windy; a typical norther, so we made a fast passage back to Oceangate Marina and headed for home. 210 miles in six days.

Photos courtesy of Mike and Kevin. Thanks, fellas!

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Black Cat on the Ocean Blue

I am sure that most of my readers are well aware of our adventures on the prototype Didi 38 "Black Cat" in the Cape to Rio Race in January 2014. This is the boat that I built in my back garden in Hout Bay, South Africa and launched nearly 20 years ago. She was the experiment in boat construction that is the basis for all of my radius chine plywood designs, with many hundreds now on the water or in build around the world.

"Black Cat" is once again out on the wide blue South Atlantic Ocean. She is participating in the 1700 mile Governors Cup Race from Simonstown, South Africa, to St Helena, the remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic. Much as I would like to have been there, I was unable to join the crew for this race but they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it without my interference. They have led the monohull fleet both on handicap and on the water from the first position report and remain up there. Only the trimaran "Banjo" leads them.

"Black Cat" at start of Governors Cup 2014. Dave Mabin photo

The crew, led by Dave Immelman, has been having great sailing, with three consecutive days of 200+ mile runs in strong downwind trade conditions. Now they are working their way through the light winds of a high pressure system at lower speed but maintaining their lead. Dave is the resident skipper on "Black Cat" and was my navigator for the Cape to Rio Race 2014.

We wish Dave and his crew continued good sailing and that they can find their way quickly through the high to more good breezes.

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