Our Boat for Cape to Rio 2014

A few weeks ago I announced that we will sail in the Cape to Rio Race in January. If you missed it, you can read it here. Now I would like to tell a bit more about the boat.

Her name is "Black Cat" and she is very special in my life. I designed her, I built her in my garden and I have sailed her across the South Atlantic three times. I have also raced and cruised her for many, many miles on the notorious Cape of Good Hope waters and she formed the foundation of my best selling range of boat designs. She is the prototype of the Didi 38 design and older sister to designs from the DS15 (Didi Sport 15) through to the DH550 .

"Black Cat" with her crew on launch day.

 I started concept sketches during the 1993 Cape to Rio Race on the Shearwater 39 "Ukelele Lady". "Ukelele" is very comfortable and carried us across the Atlantic in 29 days, excellent for a cruiser.  Still, I resolved part-way across  to do the next race on a boat of my own, which would be better able to take advantage of the downwind surfing conditions found on this race.

The new boat was to be cold-moulded wood. It was to be very light, with a big rig and deep bulb keel for high performance. Light and beamy boats are uncomfortable at sea and I sometimes get seasick, so I designed her relatively narrow for comfort. Narrow beam would also make her even faster.

I had nearly 3 years to build but I had a very big problem, I had no money to start. It was nearly a year before I had money to start building. Now the problem became a lack of time to build the cold-moulded boat, so I had to find an alternative solution that would be quicker to build.

My solution was to develop a method for building a rounded hull shape from plywood, using a radius chine form developed from my metal designs. I needed it to be mostly sheet plywood for fast construction but a rounded shape for performance, aesthetic and resale value reasons.

The resulting boat was 4 tons displacement in measurement trim and with 50% ballast ratio. She turned out to be clean, simple, pretty and a delight to sail. In two Cape to Rio Races she carried us across the Atlantic in 21 days in vastly different conditions. In one race she topped out as 18 knots and covered 250 miles in 24 hours. On the other her top speed was 22 knots but her 250 mile record went unbroken.

Where did her name come from? She is, after all, a yellow monohull and not a black catamaran. Black Cat is the top-selling peanut butter brand in South Africa and they sponsored her in the 1996 race. The kids knew her as the "Peanut Butter Boat" and her big  Black Cat spinnakers attracted a lot of attention.

Moving well in very light breeze.

She is quick on all headings in light breezes. The above photo was taken while racing on St Helena Bay in only 3-4 knots of breeze, a race in which she took line honours with a very comfortable lead over the 2nd placed boat, also a 38ft cruiser/racer.

She also loves to run free in a strong breeze. From cracked off on a fetch through to a run, she flies in strong conditions. Like me, she loves to surf. I surfed her at 22 knots down a very big wave mid-Atlantic after a storm.

Yet, she remains a home-built plywood boat and I look forward to spending 3 weeks with her and her crew as we cross the ocean once again. In the next few weeks I will write about the crew who will keep me and "Black Cat" company on this voyage.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/ .

PS. Entries for the race currently stand at 26 boats, with another 19 pending. The race website is at http://www.cape2rio2014.com/ .

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Video Interviews from Cape to Rio Race

Steve Searle did two video interviews with the "Black Cat" crew after our hassles in the opening days of the Cape to Rio Race. "Black Cat" looked after us very well in nasty conditions. Read the full story here.

Interview discussing the whole experience.

Interview about the standard of service of National Sea Rescue Institute.

View our boat designs at http://dixdesign.com/ .

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Cape to Rio Race Starts Tomorrow

It has been a long slog to get here and, strange as it may seem, even now I am not sure where "here" is. We need to be on the start line in Table Bay at 14h00 South African Time (UTC+2) and have been working toward that goal for a year. Now that we are almost there time-wise, we have had all sorts of issues popping up to try to trip us and prevent our participation. Each time that we side-step an issue, another appears in its place.

These are not problems that are directly related to the boat, neither are they related to most of the crew. I cant say what they are but they have been a major distraction in our preparations, detouring our efforts and moving our focus from much needed work into stuff that really should not be on our minds at this stage of preparations. These issues sap energy and drain enthusiasm. It takes effort to maintain optimism, which is normally self-fortifying.

We expect to be on the start line tomorrow and will be deeply disappointed if we should be prevented from going. Only time will tell whether or not we will be there. Watch for the yellow boat if you are able to watch it live, or maybe recorded live (whatever that means).

From here on I will not be posting on this blog live until after the race is over and I return to USA. I will be sending email updates to my wife, Dehlia. She will be posting on the blog but it will probably be without photos. Our Internet connections via satellite phone will be too slow to transfer photo files. If we have something really special to show then we may make an exception.

So please follow us via the tracking link on the race website at http://cape2rio2014.com. This is not a clickable link, so please copy and paste into your browsers address window.

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Cape to Rio 2014 Black Cat Preparations

Start day for Cape to Rio 2014 draws near, now only 4 days away. Preparation of our radius chine plywood Didi 38 "Black Cat" continues. Most of the big jobs have been completed but somehow the list of smaller ones never ends.

Earlier this week we were able to go sailing for a few hours to try some of the new sails, all made by the North Sails Cape Town loft. The mainsail and jib are both carbon and are a real treat to use. They set beautifully to the designed shape and are very stable. There was a bit of swell running and I found the sails to be easier to helm to than the previous laminated Dacron sails, with the sail shape not changing from surging in the swell as happens with a softer sail.

North carbon jib. Sexy see-through clothing.

Photographic conditions were not great, so these are not the best of photos. They show the new carbon mainsail and jib. For purposes of optimising our IRC rating for the race, sail area has been reduced in the headsails, with our big (and very old) Genoas with large overlap gone for good, replaced by a jib that hardly overlaps the mast, does not foul the spreaders or shrouds and is very quick to tack. It also sheets very close and allows "Black Cat" to now sail very close to the wind. This will be a great sail any time that we have to go to windward.

North carbon mainsail

The reduction in headsail area is somewhat compensated by the larger roach of the new mainsail. The larger roach and stiffer fabric means that there is a lot more conflict between backstay and mainsail, so she now has a flicker on the backstay, which you can see on the photos, to lift the top of the backstay away from the sail to allow it to pass through.

The new Code zero has massive area and showed itself to be surprisingly close-winded also, able to sheet to a very close reach, almost a beat. With large shoulders, it is also very stable and much easier to steer to than a conventional spinnaker. This sail rates as an asymmetrical spinnaker rather than a Genoa, allowing us to sail to windward with a spinnaker in light to moderate breezes.

I have written previously about some of our crew for this race. Without bio info from the other two, here is as much info as I can give for them from my own knowledge.

Dave Immelman is the normal skipper of "Black Cat" and has graciously moved into the navigator slot to allow me to come in as skipper. Dave is very experienced in competitive sailing, having crewed in the South African "Shosholoza" Americas Cup Team, a Volvo Ocean Race campaign and extensive racing in South Africa, UK and the Med. Dave is very tough as well, having rowed 3000 miles single-handed across the North Atlantic Ocean. It was intended to be a double-handed voyage but his partner took ill and was taken off the boat very soon after the start and Dave decided to continue by himself.  We will have many interesting stories to swap on this next voyage. Dave is married to Susan, an award-winning seafood chef. They have a daughter of 5 and another arriving while we are mid-Atlantic.

Dave Immelman at the time of his rowing voyage.

Adrian Pearson is the owner of "Black Cat". He was my partner in her from during construction through to 2000, when he took over full ownership. Adrian loves to sail on her but does not often skipper her, preferring to hand over that job to someone with more experience. Not that Adrian lacks ocean experience, he was in my crew for the 1996 and 2000 Cape to Rio Races, crewed on her for the return from Rio in 2000 and did many coastal regattas and races with me around the Cape of Good Hope. Adrian is a retailer in Johannesburg, co-owner of a large grocery store.  He is currently unattached and has two sons and a daughter.

Dont forget that you will be able to track our progress across the Atlantic. Go to the official race website Cape to Rio 2014 and click on the tracking link at upper right of the screen.

I should be able to make one more post before we sail away. I hope to make an occasional post while on the water but cant guarantee that it will happen. Our Internet connection will be via costly satellite phones so has to be used sparingly. We will have a separate boat blog for the race and I will post the address of that blog in my next post here.

Read about our designs at http://dixdesign.com/.

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