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From: Ted Rogers (twrogers@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed 17 Jul 2002 - 16:11:46 BST
Hi Chris,
<p><p>Nothing very secret or spectacular about what I've done. See below for my
answers to your questions:
<p><p>On Mon, 15 Jul 2002 14:07:18 +1000 Chris Dixon <chris@compositespars.com>
wrote:
<p><p>Ted,
<p><p>I have been sailing I14's for a while now here in Aus and have been looking
at doing some type of rope rigging myself. I just sold my B3 to a guy called
Joe Poire in seattle. I have been contemplating doing a new one and i have
een some rope rigging with the 12' skiff guys here in Australia.
I have a few questions below you might be able to help me with.
<p><p>1.) Would it be possible for you to send me a few photos of the ends where
you have spliced it??? I realise that this is giving away your
secrets, but if there is nothing too special about it it would be great
to see and compare it to what happens here in Aus.
<p><p>12-strand splices are very simple. Make an eye of the desired size, and tuck
the tail back into the standing part for 24x the diameter of the line. Taper
the tucked end for about 25mm to eliminate any hard spots in the line. Stich
over the length of the splice up & back, then whip the throat of the splice.
Done. With practice, less than 10 minutes per splice, even with lots of care.
<p><p>Attaching to the mast is still simple, but not as obvious. If you have a mast
with t-ball slots in it already, you can just splice or luggage tag onto a
welded t-ball eye. Navtec makes good ones, but they're relatively expensive,
about $15 US.
<p><p> What I've done, starting from a bare tube with no holes (though you could do
this over old t-ball holes) is make up some carbon fittings that bond onto the
mast in the appropriate places, and provide a hanger to attach a shackle to.
Then the shroud is luggage tagged to the shackle. If the holes in your
spreaders are bushed (good to minimize chafe- a piece of plastic tubing will
do) , it then becomes possible to remove or replace the whole shroud without
cutting anything, unlike wire shrouds that are often swaged in place.
<p><p>The carbon fittings sound complex, but they're actually pretty simple. Start
with an X shape of bi-directional cloth, about 200cm tall and 100cm wide at
the ends, and only as wide as your shackle pin in the middle. Lay 15 strips of
uni each as wide as the shackle pin on top of the bi layer, in a fan from
about +30 degrees to about -30 degrees. Put a small piece of metal rod the
same diameter as your shackle pin across the center of the X,(with some mold
release) and fold the X over on itself so you have a triangle. Put some mold
release on the mast where you want the fitting to end up, and place the
uncured triangle on the mast , forming it to the tube. Clamp in place with
masking tape. Let the part cure, peel it off of the mast and trim the edges.
Then sand the bond side and the mast wher the fitting will go, and glue in
place. As a rule of thumb, you need about 1 square inch of bond area per 1000
lb of shear load, (1 square cm per 70 kg), so my shroud attachments are about
4 sq inches. These fittings survived Bermuda, (though we did start to pull
some fittings out of the hull)and have continued to do well sailing in SF bay.
Next month, the Gorge....
<p><p>3.) Is the stuff that you got UV protected or did you have to coat it in
omething to protect it??
<p><p>The Yale Vectran I bought does have a UV coating applied during manufacture.
I'm thinking of putting Yale Maxijacket coating on to further reduce UV
concerns. I've been using Vectran for lowers for about 3 years though, with no
problems other than a little fuzz.
<p><p>4.) Do you know how much your total rigging weighed?? i.e. how much weight
did it save you??
<p><p>The wire was about 3.5 lb, plus fittings, etc, the vectran is about 0.8 lb. So
we saved maybe 1-1.5 kg in rigging. The whole mast, rigged,weighs just over 9
kg.
<p><p>5.) What is the cost comparison for you, i.e. US$90 for vectran, US$?? for
wire rigging
<p><p>The problem with wire is the swaged end fittings. Each end, plus rig shop
labor, is about $15-$20 US. And there are 14 ends..if you don't have
intermediates or stumping strops. So the vectran at $0.92 per foot
(apsltd.com) ends up a lot cheaper than wire at $0.40 or $0.50 at foot....
<p><p>6.) Did you use it on you forestay as well as side stays, uppers etc??
<p><p>The forestay is the place that's easiest to do it. The loads are lower
(400-500 lb vs. 1000+ on the main shrouds) and the jib luff covers and fairs
in the 4mm diameter.
<p><p>7.) Doesn't vectran have alot of stretch??
<p><p>The manufacturer , Yale, says that Vectran stretches 3.2% at breaking, while
wire stretches about 1.8%. So by using 5/32"(4mm) vectran (3200 lb breaking
vs. 1900 lb for 1/8" wire) for shrouds, forestay, and lowers, 1/8"(3mm) for
uppers, I've sized the vectran for the same stretch as wire, rather than the
same strength. Vectran does have some initial stretch/set-up, so I spliced my
shrouds about 1% shorter than the wire dimensions, then put the rig up and
pulled on about 1000 lb of rig tension and left it for a couple days.
<p><p>Obviously the one negative to the approach I've taken is that the nominal
diameter of the vectran is bigger than the wire it replaces. Under load, this
diameter diference is less than you might expect, but I'm thinking of trying
PBO next, which will allow 1:1 replacement of wire, with twice the strength
and the same stretch. For now though, I trust the durability of the vectran
more than PBO.
<p><p>Hope that helps,
<p><p>Ted
<p><p>As you probably know it is winter over here and we are all tucked away in
hte sheds at the moment starting on next seasons projects. If you can help
me out with some of my above questions i would appreciate it greatly. I am
ure i sould feedback any info i get on this end as well.
<p><p>Look forward to hearing from you
<p><p>Chris Dixon
<p><p><p><p>-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Rogers [mailto:twrogers@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, 13 July 2002 2:23 PM
To: International 14 Mailing List
Subject: Re: [I14] change = good?
<p><p><p><p>Scott -
<p><p>A reality check on costs. In 1998, I paid $11,000 US for US 1104, a Bieker
II. After finishing 4th at the West Coasts last summer, and 19th at the
worlds last fall, I sold it for $7500. It's still capable of going much
faster than I'm capable of sailing it. And a little faster than a Vanguard
15 too.....
<p><p>A brand new Australian-built B3, as high-tech as they come, was sold at the
worlds in Bermuda for $15K, complete, with sails. A new B3 from England is
$18K. A new Water Rat 505 is $27K. Go figure.
<p><p>As for new masts, I bought the tubes,etc for my current one for $1200, and
invested a couple days work to rig it. All that expensive, high-tech fiber
now means that I spent $90 for vectran for all my shrouds and spliced them
myself, instead of paying $300+ to a rigger to make them out of wire. And
they're lighter too. I'm guessing a V-15 mast from Vanguard is more than
$1300.....
<p><p>14s will never be the cheapest boat on the block, nor the simplest. But the
reward for good sailing is a lot more speed, which means you don't need to
drop $20K on flashy gear to win races, you just need to go sailing and make
ure the equipment you've got works. I just watched Kris and Jamie win the
US Nationals with a 4 year old boat and pretty standard gear over a number
of newer boats with more gadgets because they sailed well.
<p><p>I can't argue that V-15s do have a big local fleet, and there's lots of
tactical racing. But after finishing 10th at our nationals last weekend, I
have to say that the current state of the US 14 fleet is such that a bad
jibe or missing a shift can cost you 3-4 places very quickly. A bad start
and you're history. Not all that dis-similar to the Sabot-Laser-FJ culture
I grew up in, except everything's happening a lot faster. Which makes it
consideraby more fun in my book.
<p><p>Ted Rogers
US1140
<p><p>At 11:21 AM 7/11/02 -0700, Rand Arnold wrote:
>(I messed up the listserver last night, so I'm fowarding some mail that
>got lost in the process...)
>
>From: "Scott Kozinchik" <scottkozinchik@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [I14] change = good or bad?
>Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:17:20 +0000
>
>Nope. Can't tell you what the "ideal" weight is. I just popped-in with that
>to keep alive the idea Paul Bieker orginally had of keeping the
>mast-height/righting-moment ratio similar to the pre-1996 rules.
>
>As others have pointed out, this is, of course, only relevant to the N.
>American I-14 boats since the 14' Skiff started with an even taller mast
>than it is now. I think it's totally safe to say that the 14' culture in
>Australia has been, and still is, for larger sailors. If you look at the N.
>American fleet, particularly all the Seattle & SF Bay Area guys, they just
>aren't as big - by a fair bit in some cases. I personally haven't seen the
>UK fleet.
>
>So there is a fundamental divide in the class on this issue (and pretty
much
>all others for that matter :-) ) that arguably stems from the
>pre-amalgamation times.
>
>I personally don't have a position on this - especially since I can't
afford
>another boat right now - which is the real issue affecting the class for
>many potential new-comers in my opinion. And it's not rudders and it's not
>racks. It's carbon fiber, PBO, Kevlar, professionally built boats, and a
>faster and better mast every year.
>
>A new competitive boat in the US, I've been told, would be about $20,000 -
>$25,000. A really good competitive used boat would be $10,000 - $15,000.
To
>keep this in perspective, a brand new Vanguard 15 would be $4,500. Can you
>compare a V15 to an I14? Of course not! But I can sail every wednesday
night
>against 30 other V15 sailors in San Francisco, a couple can sail it
together
>(no getting in the dog-house every weekend and one night a week since she's
>out there with you!), and 15 boats hit the marks at the same time honing
>your strategic mind and knowledge/use of the rules. You're sailing against
>other sailors, not other boats.
>
>Skiffs are much faster and much more fun from a speed perspective, and you
>learn a whole lot more about sail-shape and the dynamics of sailng, but
most
>sailors coming up today through junior programs and then college teams are
>more accustomed to, and enjoy, the slower, more strategic kind of
one-design
>sailing. Development class sailors typically want something else and don't
>mind playing follow-the-leader around the course with 5 other boats hoping
>someone capsizes to gain a position (the Seattle experience in a
nut-shell).
>
>I propose to this class that the dwindling numbers are due to a combination
>of prohibitive costs and the fact that more young sailors today want what
>one-design sailing provides.
>
>
> >From: craig <craig@oceangraphics.com.au>
> >To: <maillist@i14.org>
> >Subject: [I14] change = good or bad?
> >Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 08:21:28 +1000
> >
> >Scott wrote:the suggestion in the US to go wider was to bring the ideal
> >crew
> >weight back to what it was before the mast went higher here, which of
> >course
> >favored heavier crews. You could therefore think of this as an effort to
> >preserve the pre-1996 nature of the class, not change it.
> >
> >Scott maybe you can tell us all what is the ideal crew weight?
> >
> >IN Australia the light crews go well in the light, and heavier crews
better
> >in a good breeze! The Australian 14 has been 6ft wide for 103 years as
well
> >as 14ft long for the same time. The international 14 I beleive was 5'6"
and
> >180lbs before it merge with the Aus 14. The Aus 14 was 165lbs with a mast
> >that was 12" taller than it is now.
> >
> >Australia agreed to the changes in weight and mast height only because we
> >were told by the international lobby group that It would be very hard to
> >convince the INT 14 Fleet to merge if we didn't go up in weight and down
in
> >mast height.
> >
> >The biggest development that has to go on in Australia (and some other
> >countries I think) in the near future is not the development of new rules
> >for the boat but the development of getting new people into the class.
> >
> >Maybe what Australia needs to do to increase its numbers again is not the
> >same as the rest of the INT 14 world needs to do. I think the next couple
> >of
> >months will sought out the future direction for the class in Australia.
> >
> >Craig Padman
> >AUS400
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
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>_________________________
>Rand Arnold
>International 14 mailing list listmaster
>
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