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The Lip Bruce Schwab has put a rather interesting bow lip modification on his Open 60 Opean Planet. Here is the scoop.
What is the new 'bowlip' on Ocean Planet all about? Would you believe that I just wanted a good place our new Sailing Anarchy stickers?...No?...Then read on.. Am I a wingnut looking for some miracle performance breakthrough? Ok, I'll give you the wingnut label (anyone entered in the Vendee Globe certainly qualifies), but seriously, the strange and beautiful contraption on our bow and our new bow shape in general evolved out of practical thought. This Anarchistic logo bracket is not intended to be any kind of breakthrough, but simply a small development to help keep the bow up, limit the water (and it's weight) coming over the nose, and help keep me from getting flushed off the deck. Ocean Planet has much lower freeboard in the bow than other Open 60's. This makes for less windage and a lower CG, but in hindsight we could have used more height at the nose. With our first bowsprit, we could occasionally stuff the whole sprit and nose into a wave which somewhat put on the brakes....
Step # one was new unstayed bowsprit, provided mounted at an angle to keep the tip out of the drink. Adding this was done in a bit of a rush (which has been a theme for us since the beginning!) before leaving NorCal in 2002. It added a fair bit of weight being a heavier bowsprit tube to start with, and being seated in a full length housing inside the bow that attached to our headstay bulkhead. At the time it was also impractical to remove the structural bases of the old "A-frame" buried in the hull sides as that would be major surgery and we were short on time. Although far from perfect, the new sprit was a big improvement as we could crash through waves with the genniker or spinnaker tacks getting sent underwater at high speed which was a problem before. This is the configuration that took into the 2002/2003 Around Alone, up to the New Zealand stopover in Tauranga.
Hurtling down waves on the way to NZ I began to have additional worries about colliding with a hard object at high speed. This led me to lust after an external foam crash box at the waterline, rather than our internal box that met the rules but not much else. So, much to the dismay of our shore crew we rushed through another modification project in far too little time (sound familiar?). At the time I also did a shape change to quiet the entry into the water, by making the bow plumb, the 'V' a bit deeper and fairing it in over a good distance. This whole project, in spite of the rush actually worked quite well, adding a little speed and gave a softer ride. However, once again it added some weight and water still came over the nose more than desirable. Getting flushed down the foredeck a few times will get you to thinking, believe me.
Fast forward through the rest of the way around the world, a brief rest for me back home, then to a leaky winter shop in Maine. In spite of our perpetual lack of resources I had some time (for once), so it was time to FINISH the bow. Step one was to get as much weight out as possible by redoing the internal structure of the sprit housing and headstay bulkhead, along with finally removing the original A-frame bases in the hull. This was an enormous amount of work, but the end result was about 80 pounds of weight removed. While this was underway, I spent many long hours in discussion with our designer Tom Wylie and another young designer from Newport, Ross Weene, about ways to limit the water coming over the bow. We also wanted to add dynamic lift, wanted it to be lightweight, and recognized the need to shed water from above when REALLY digging in. We went through endless ideas from added bulwark (basically a taller footrail), a flange at the deck that attached to the sprit, a full-on 'Grundig' style wing, but nothing we had seen before seemed to cut it. Finally, Ross and I came up with an amalgamation of a wing and regular powerboat strake, shaped with enough of an angle to provide lift, and enough extension to limit the water coming over the bow. I won't bore you Will Rooks, our new head 'OP Team Fabricator', built our new attention getting device out of H80 foam, with a light carbon skin. Total weight added is around 20lbs for the two of them so our net weight loss on our whole winter bow project is well over 50lbs. Will all this work be worth it? I sure hope so. But in any case we look cool, generate a lot of questions, and in general are doing our best to live up to the high Sailing Anarchy standards of excellence. Look good. Your
loyal SA reporter, Haji This American team for the Vendee Globe is made possible by your donations to The Made in America Foundation (www.bruceschwab.com/sponsorship.cfm), and our supplier sponsors: Coast-Line
International: www.coast-lineintl.com Join our team: www.bruceschwab.com/sponsorship.cfm
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