Still learning after all those years

Remember this? ….. the monohulls were fun, too

Ray Davies blogs from the best office in the world …..

My life has gone around a full circle. When I was young, I learned to sail an Optimist off Murrays Bay on the north shore of Auckland.

These days, when I’m at the “office”, I’m more than likely testing multihulls off Murrays Bay. All those years later I’m still learning. The boats are different but the purpose is the same – learning how to go faster and win.

The Hauraki Gulf is an ideal testing ground for our SL33 catamarans. It’s always possible to find a satisfactory sea state whatever the wind direction. We rarely miss a day’s sailing because of the weather.

We’re on the water for five to six hours a day. Test, test and test again. Sound boring. Not at all…. it’s the best office in the world. And the catamarans are seriously good  fun to sail, even when we’re testing rather than racing.

Remember those old monohull America’s Cup class boats? We did a lot of testing in them, too. Long days. Day after day. They are big, heavy boats. There have been cases when crew have fallen asleep.

There’s no afternoon nap on the SL33s.  They are fast and exciting, rather like a high performance dinghy. The sensation of speed is amazing. They are exciting even when testing five or six hours a day, five or six days a week. Looking back it was fun sailing the monohulls, too, but…

We have two SL33s to trial development concepts from the design team in the real world and for improving sailing team multihull skills. They are fitted with dozens of sensors that measure just about everything so we know almost instantly if a new design element as a beneficial effect on speed. Combined with a seat-of-your-pants  dinghy style we feel pretty well covered.

There’s no arguing with the data from the sensors. Over the past few months, we have accumulated a massive amount of data in all sorts of sailing conditions.

We now have two  wingsails in our 33s.  These cats were designing for sailing in light airs on European alpine lakes – not in 30 knots in a nasty chop on the Hauraki Gulf. We have given them a real thrashing and they are holding up really well.