So, now that we’ve got over a thousand miles on the boat, I think that it’s time for a little reflection on our transition to a performance boat. To this point, switching to a very powerful, light boat has not been difficult for us. All of the sailing that either one of us has ever done has always been on a more traditional cruising boat, so we had some trepidation about setting sail on a boat which is so radically different than anything either of us has sailed before.
So, what do we think so far?
First and foremost, Rocket Science was never designed to be a flat-out racing boat. The idea behind the design was to have a fast, comfortable cruiser which could be raced as well. Her sail handling systems are definitely biased toward the shorthanded cruising side of things. We utilize a roller furling/reefing head sail, and the main has a very low friction external track coupled with an electric winch. Even with the main at nearly 900 square feet, I have not had any trouble with reefing to this point. So far, we’ve only had winds in the high 20’s at most, but I don’t anticipate any difficulty even in gale conditions. More surprising (and very pleasing) is that we have been able to reef without turning up into the wind. This takes a bit of patience, alternating the halyard and reefing lines, but being able to get the main reefed while sailing off the wind is a huge plus on the safety side of things.
We’ve found the boat to be a delight to sail, but it does require more attention than a more traditional boat. We’re paying a lot more attention to sail trim than we used to. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s pretty easy to get lazy with sail handling on the longer trips, so paying attention and keeping the boat in balance is a habit that is good to develop.
We’re still working out how to keep the boat moving fast at deeper angles. The main is exceptionally roachy, so when sailing deep, it seems to blanket the spinnaker much more than a traditional main. We will likely end up putting a couple of reefs in the main anytime we use the chute. We found that we were not very fast when the rhumb line was DDW on the Haha. Gybing to a high enough angle to get everything drawing well had us sailing a lot more miles through the water than I would have liked.
Generally, Rocket Science is exceptionally well balanced. Even reaching at speeds over 10 knots, the helm is completely neutral.
We have noticed that there’s a significant change in helm dynamics when the boat is transitioning between displacement and non-displacement speeds. The autopilot seems to have a bit of trouble coping with that change. The boat has an older Simrad pilot which has a relatively slow response to changing conditions, so we’ll be changing over to an NKE pilot when we get to the East coast. These have been used with good success on the open 50’s and 60’s used in the single handed ocean races. We think that one of these will make a big difference. In the meantime, if we feel like sailing at speeds up in the teens on deeper angles, we’ll be hand steering for the moment. We can always shorten sail if we need to.
The other thing which has been quite interesting is the behavior of Rocket Science in larger following seas. We had some concern about the big, open transom. These were entirely unfounded. If a sea gets steep enough to break, the boat simply takes off surfing out ahead of harm’s way. We haven’t had more than a few little splashes come aboard, even in 12 footers off point Conception. There’s absolutely no tendency for the stern to get pushed around by quartering seas.
All in all, we’re happy and not at all intimidated (well, not TOO intimidated). We’re confident at this point that Jenny and I will have no trouble double handing on passages. It’s certainly not a beginners boat, and she’s less forgiving of mistakes than most, but with a bit of care and a conservative approach, we don’t expect that we’ll have very much trouble. Our whole idea was never to set any speed records, just to have comfortable, fast passages, and Rocket Science seems to be able to deliver that with a minimum of drama.
Our thanks to Paul Bieker for a really outstanding design. We’ve been quite surprised at just how sea kindly the motion of Rocket Science is, considering her light displacement. We expected a pretty harsh ride, and the reality has been just the opposite. Well done, Paul.