LooseChange said..Grand Surprise
Quite a wicked looking weapon, very fine bow section and flat as a pancake on the bottom, so certainly not hard to stick the pointy end in.
A local sister ship confirmed that you need to be stacked like lemmings up the back to stop her bow digging in. He also pointed out something I missed and that is the the backstay appears to keep coming loose, you can see them trying to get it on when the rig comes down.
I added some clarification in brackets to some of the words in the following translation.
An update from the Morpho skipper.
The skipper of the boat - Jean-Marie Mechelany - agreed to comment on the pictures: "
We were in first position in the Grand Surprise category for 16 hours. Around 5 pm, the cloud began to approach. I looked back and when I saw that boats were starting to leave at the luff, we slid the spinnaker and unrolled the genoa. The wind continued to grow and we ended up rolling the genoa. It was very fast. " We caught 60 knots ...
At that time, we were between Lugrin and Meillerie, a few miles from Bouveret, almost halfway through. There was an accelerating effect with the mountain I think. We caught 60 knots ... The important thing was not to go to the lof (luff, or broach) because we could lose a teammate given the height of the sectors (lifelines). In the video, we can see that the boat stuffs once, twice ... The third time, it did not happen. With the water bundles, there was too much pressure in the mast and it broke at the outrigger (gooseneck) hook. (See end of the video)
They sound like a pretty competent crew, they were talking about last year's race where it also got to 50 knots and the mast held up fine.
). The rig coming down makes sense as well. I think I have been reading to much on S&s 34s and Top Hats with spinnaker poles. Thanks for clearing that up
and when the kids are with me they love it, they get to steer
