So Monday I took the afternoon off from work and went out for a sail on the Rocket 22 with skipper Alan Barnes, his son Nick (part of the time) and another pickup crew Tim ... shoot, forgot his last name. We zipped around for a while, Nick took some photos from shore, then we headed over to Bay View Boat Club for the Monday Night Madness race.
Many thanks for this opportunity to Alan Barnes and Anthony Dutton of Rocket Boats. Check it out at
www.rocketboats.com; it's a very cool boat.
Here's a little boat review and description of the experience that I wrote up in an email to a friend (maybe I'll come back later and edit this a bit, but I probably won't get around to it):
There was some good and some bad (more on that later), but yes, I really liked the boat. It's well thought out ergonomically. Most of the time you sit on the deck, feet in, but you can move inboard with your butt against the footrest, or turn around and hike with your knees over the nice rounded gunwale. All very comfortable.
I was doing the jib sheets on tacks. They're 2:1 but with no winches, so timing is important to get them in before they load up. I was jumping across the boat with the new sheet in my hand, but I couldn't get used to how wide the boat is (9.5', same as my 32 footer) so I kept coming up short and not having good leverage to pull on the sheet. Also we had a lot of barber hauler on, and it's just a metal ring around both legs of the sheet which increased friction a lot. I think I'd change that to a double block.
Going upwind the boat has a nice wide groove; it seems to be best to pinch to keep the boat flat. We were luffing the sails a lot with 20 knots of wind on the Circle and no reefs; the main looked pretty unhappy with a lot of twist and the top deflecting around the shrouds.
But going downwind is just amazing. We'd hoist the asymmetric (me, never having flown an asso before, trying to remember what to do with the tackline and sprit) and accelerate up to 14-15 or so, all three of us crowding aft on the weather rail until Alan warned us we were about to push him off the back ... On the Circle we were occasionally losing speed as we ran into waves, so we were really looking forward to the flatter water at BVBC.
So we turn up over there about half an hour before the start, all these guys with Coronado 25s and Santana 22s and Alberg 30s giving us strange looks. The RC gave us a conventional triangle course, except that at BVBC you start at the windward mark. It's a different experience starting a race with a boat like this. Alan just idled up to the line with the jib rolled up, then at the gun sheeted in the main and we accelerated away. We raised the chute immediately and started pulling away although we had a few roundups because the first leg was a beam or close reach. Then about 5 minutes into the leg there's a BANG - the lower pintle strap on the rudder let go, the pin broke and the rudder came off in Alan's hand. So while wallowing around with the fleet bearing down on us, we got the spinnaker down, started the motor and headed back to Berkeley. Seems like Alan might have been a bit embarrassed, but he took it in stride. Development you know, see what breaks and fix it.
So those are my impressions. Had a blast and got a nice hat out of the deal.
Labels: Sailing
Here's me in my boat, rounding Southeast Farallon Island in the Singlehanded Farallones race last April. The boat is Solar Wind, a 1980 Martin 32 that I've owned (with a partner) for four years. Don Martin designed this boat and more recently redesigned Gary Mull's Pocket Rocket to produce the Rocket 22, which is the main reason I was interested in checking out the Rocket.
