Airbus Winter Regatta 2017, fishing net

IdeesfixVIII participated to the Airbus Winter Regatta 2017 and needed to be ferried to DOSC and back. The way out went very smoothly, a few tacks were needed out of Abu Dhabi and then a long starboard tack brought us to DOSC in about 10 hours.
On the way back however the winds were weak and a residual sea was still felt from the Saturday  winds. We were half motoring half sailing on Starboard  with light winds from North when about midway we got tangled in the above fishing net. This was not a fun experience, we had to sail in with out engine at a great reduced speed. Nicolas saw the net and cut the engine real fast but we got caught in it. By luck the prop did not get tangled. We freed ourselves using a knife but a large part of net remained wrapped arround to the keel fin.
There is a lot of fishing going on and the nets are huge and are lit up. It makes the sailing very challenging in those areas. The fish have no chance !

Star shower, Monday 17 October 2017, 19:19 local

On our monday night sail we had the privilege to witness the re-entry of the body parts of SL-4 R/B or the Progress MS-07, a Russian cargo spacecraft. It was like fireworks in the sky lasting more then a minute. Here is a link with further information:
http://alsadeemastronomy.ae/spacecraft-re-entry-sighted-in-the-uae/

SD50 cone clutch

Reverse was not giving any more power. Yanmar traced the problem to the cone clutch reverse gear, which needs to be changed. This seems to be a common problem on SD50 saildrives.

3Di head repair

At the top of the 3Di main the luff tape gets worn on port side during drops. The Sailrite sewing machine allowed for a quick repair, it's strong and powerfull enough to sew the head.

Jib harken carbo foil replacement

Yesterday with the help of Clive we changed the jib carbo foil which got damaged two weeks ago when the A4 got tangled up in the forestay. We saved the A4 but the carbo foil got damaged and needed to be replaced. Fitting the new one was real hard, it simply did not feed in. We ended up using a hailyard to winch it up and also pushing by hand. We cut it at the same length 18.77m is the old one, but it's a bit short. It could be 20cm longer. The bottom should be 1.10m above deck.

The heat rising to 40C did not help, but it's in place finaly.

Engine reverse issue

In reverse only very little thrust is generated. According to Gori the blade angle in reverse should be 60 degrees, this is what we have about. It is as so the engine is not delivering enough revs.

The prop is here in reverse mode and the blade angle seems good. A full video is on Vimeo > IdeesfixVIII Gori propeller. This makes mooring a bit tricky, we need to manually pull IdeesfixVIII into the morring in reverse. The temperatures are now reaching 40C, and the engine is maybe battling a bit.

IdeesfixVIII video clip

Somebody made this video:

https://vimeo.com/221098396

It's very representative of our operation..

IdeesfixVIII gets a new second hand 3Di main !

Here is our second hand square top 3Di main name MRoss, she looks great and the twin backstays do their job. IdeesfixVIII also does not feel unbalanced at all, in 10Kts she sails great, the leach also seems right. A bit of tweaking needs to be done but she fits real well.

Here is the crew at the first MRoss main 3Di trial, David did a great job of getting it, Ross was also instrumental at getting us there.

Linux Mint 18 on Lenovo Ideapad 110S

Here is Linux Mint 18, "Sarah", running on Lenovo Ideapad 110S. The installation was a bit tricky due to UEFI versus legacy BIOS. I disabled UEFI and secure boot for the installation but then enabled UEFI again which caused UEFI to not detect the bootloader. UEFI is EFI V2.31 from Phoenix Tech. Refind solved the problem. As of now I boot using a refind USB flash drive. The 110S is a great little notebook and at $166 no complaints. This makes a great little system to play around with arduino. WIFI is RTL8821ae which Mint detects fine. Cinnamon is new to me but is a very nice and sleak desktop, Linux Mint in general is very clean and easy.
The plan was to install Debian which I normally use but somehow got Mint running. WIFI RTL8821 must be loaded as separate driver to be copied on a seperate USB flash drive, the installer will prompt for it.
Regarding arduino I used the arduino-mk package and could compile and upload via the command line, this requires a correct Makefile. Also sudo usermod -a -G dialout marc for arduino to detect /usr/ttyACM0.
ACM stands for abstract control model which supports ITU V.250 (Hayes).
The 110S is great, a little small for heavy usage, for Linux installation disable secure boot but keep UEFI on, do not start the installation in legacy BIOS.

48 Knots

Beginning of February 2017 strong NW winds rocked IdeesfixVIII, the gusts went up to 48 Kts, heeling IdeesfixVIII up to 10-20 degrees. No damage was suffered.

Twin Backstay installation

On 29 January 2017 Nicolas got up the mast and drilled a 30mm diameter whole to fit in the new axel from Southern Spars. A centering 15mm axel was fitted in place of the main halyard hook system. This served as a guide for the bell drill.  The hook cassette did not move.

The installation went smoothly, here is the purchase system at deck level:

The purchase is 4 as per the single backstay system, the same winches are also used.

We did not add outer attachment points, the 20mm carbon thick stern deemed strong enough to take the load. This simplified a lot the installation. We tested the twin backstays during the next Wednesday sail and all was good, the handling is a bit more work but the backstays do not need to be realeased a lot.

Here is the link to Nicolas Rossier's Rigging Work Shop:
www.sui4616.ch

This was a difficult installation which went very well without taking the mast down.

ADCA Commodore's Cup 2017 Race 01

On 28 January 2017 took place Race 01 of the 2017 ADCA's Commodore's Cup. For a change winds where from the south leading to a spinnaker start, this changes from the ordinary. The course was to FN2 then Z15 this sailed under spinnaker followed to a beat back to FN2 and Emirates Palace Marina. IdeesfixVIII finished second behind Mistress who sailed the short halfway course. 10 Minutes seperated us in corrected time which is quite a lot, this partly due to dying wind. It's going to be an interesting year !