2003 Solo/Twin, Newport, Rhode Island
Friday July 25, 2003 saw the start of the 94 mile New England Solo/Twin Race from Newport, Rhode Island. A total of 51 boats started, mostly monohulls, mostly sailed double handed although there were a few singlehanders in the monohull classes. In the multihull division were 5 trimarans of various makes and one catamaran of my design, an Atlantic 55 called Synergy sailed by owner Dave Penfield and crew Rob Malin. I sailed with my friend and master boatbuilder Don Watson on his venerable 35' trimaran, Swampfox. Note: West coasters might recognize some of Don's work in the form of Heart of Gold which he built many years ago.
It was a beautiful summer day with SW winds of 10 to maybe 15 knots in the puffs. The first leg was directly upwind 25 miles to the buoy on the SW corner of Block Island. The multihulls were the last class to start, an hour and ten minutes after the first monohull class. The multihull fleet is a competitive bunch with lightweight, slippery boats and experienced skippers. While many of these boats are offshore capable few would meet the consensus definition of a cruising boat. None of the trimarans had inboard power and interior accommodations are Spartan to say the least. By contrast the catamaran Synergy is quite a different animal. With beautiful interior accommodations in four double cabins, two spacious heads with hot showers, large twin inboard diesel engines and abundant tankage, a freezer, cruising size battery banks and a large hard bottom dinghy. She was also ready to go cruising as well, with tools and spares, enough food to feed all the trimaran crews for a week, two windsurfers with six sails assorted masts and booms, scuba gear, and even Carol Penfield's dumbbell weights onboard. The A55's weight is about four times that of the next largest multihull in the event.
Swampfox has a beautiful new kevlar mainsail and kevlar overlapping jib and usually does pretty well, especially upwind. At the start I was quite nervous as to how Synergy would compare against these well tuned trimarans. My nervousness turned to relief when after short tacking down Narragansett Bay, Synergy was still ahead of us after a great start. The western shore was favored and we spent the next two hours splitting tacks with the big cat, Swampfox and Synergy exchanging the lead. Due to the rapid tacking Dave Penfield was sailing Synergy with the small self tacking jib rather then the larger and slower to tack genoa. I was amazed the cat could do so well with the small self tacking jib.
During the beat toward Pt. Judith we passed numerous monohulls that had started ahead of us and would continue to do so for the rest of the race. Watson likes to sail Swampfox close to the wind as he maintains "higher and slower" is really the fastest way to windward. I never noticed any difference in our pointing ability compared to the monohulls we sailed past or Synergy which we sailed close to for hours.
As we passed Pt. Judith the need to short tack ended. Dave Penfield unrolled Synergy's Genoa and she promptly began to walk away from us and was the first multihull to reach Block Island after a three hour beat to windward. I was very pleased at Synergy's progress, although my captain wasn't.
Just about that time the leech of the kevlar jib on Swampfox exploded. We had to replace it with an older, smaller dacron jib and we saw our lead quickly turn into last place as the rest of the trimarans passed us by on the last 5 miles of the upwind leg.
The lightweight trimarans took off as chutes were hoisted at the south side of Block Island for a 36 mile long deep reach to a buoy just south of Noman's Land (a small island south of Martha's Vineyard). Synergy lost ground on this leg- the wind was on the light side to get a cat of this size pumped up and the trimarans with less wetted surface and much more sail area to weight than the cat sailed relatively better.
On Swampfox we struggled to catch Synergy and couldn't. Don felt the wind to be a bit too much for the large spinnaker and too far aft for the new schreacher so we did the best we could with the smaller asymmetric chute. We passed a few mono's on the reach but there wasn't enough wind to have much of an advantage over them.
Shortly after sunset we rounded the leeward mark and sheeted in hard for the Racon buoy at the Naragansett Bay approach about 30 miles to the west. We could lay the mark but just barely. The wind had backed off some and shifted toward west, the nearby Buzzards Bay tower report during that period was a steady 8.2 knot wind. Swampfox really hurt for the lack of the big kevlar jib and lost yet more ground.
Around 11 pm I was steering and getting cold sitting in the wind. My foul weather jacket was zipped tight with hood up trying to retain all the body heat possible. Also I was pretty sleepy having departed very early that morning to sail to the race start. As my eyes glazed over while watching the compass dance, trying hard to keep Swampfox sailing on course, my thoughts strayed to the crew of Synergy, many miles ahead of us. I suspected they were sitting comfortably inside the pilothouse with the autopilot doing the work, looking at their exact position on the chart plotter and probably sipping something hot. The next day I found out that I was nearly correct but had missed the fact that they were also enjoying the Red Sox game!
We passed the leading monohulls before reaching the Racon buoy then bore off on the short leg for the finish close reaching with the big chute in about 5 knots of wind.
Synergy had us beat by 20 odd minutes and beat all of the 45 monohulls that started. She beat the fastest monohull, the radical canting keel Red Herring by 17 minutes in elapsed time. And was 1 hour 38 minutes faster than the next fastest monohull in elapsed time. Given that most of the race was to windward and there was no close reaching except for the very short last leg in light air (sorry Beaufort "Light Breeze") I would say this is pretty convincing proof that a cruising catamaran can sail to windward well if it is designed to do so.
Are there faster monohulls than the ones entered in the Solo/Twin? Certainly. Would the multihulls have fared as well sailing against state of the art IMS 50'ers with 15 hefty bodies sitting to windward, not likely. But then again why were no boats of that type participating in this race? Probably because they can't be sailed by two people. Most cruising boats are sailed shorthanded so I think a race of this type establishes a more realistic comparison to real world usage than most race courses.