“Power reflections” from METS from a multihull perspective

Being out of the office for almost two weeks due to extensive travelling, we are now catching up with all the todo’s. One of the reasons being on the road was visiting METS in Amsterdam, the biggest marine equipment trade show in Europe. As always there is a lot to see and discuss. During the past years the electronics portion of the fair has increased considerably, now also seeing some gain into switches and the wiring itself. Not to mention LED:s in all shapes and colours. Finally we get some useful warm white LED:s as opposed to the older not so cosy cold white ones. Now you can even get “champagne” white….

Power on a multihull is obviously a major issue, considering the battery weight (and of course cabling) as part of our continuous weight chasing mission. Even though our sailors are battery power conscious, the increased use (need…!) of electronics spells some careful planning of the installation and consumption. Except for the Radio/CD/MP3 player (what would one do without it in speeds over 15 knots!!), VHF and instruments, the GPS plotter, AIS transponder and auto pilot seems to become more standard than exception. Not to mention the need of charging all the crews mobile phones, cameras and even PC.


Our LED navigation lights from Lopolight

Except for the navigation (LED standard) and interior lights (LED option), solar cell installations (cabin top solar cell option, however regulator and socket for a second not fixed cell) we need to work even harder on the power equation, especially since most of us really prefer sailing as opposed to motoring (and charging with the alternator) in almost all conditions.

One of the solutions, however due to price still limited as an option, could obviously be the use of fuel cells where 13 kg (8 kg for aggregate and 5 kg for 5 litres of Methanol) could give as much as 400 Amps. More efficient and lighter solar cells obviously will also improve the power equation. We hope to see more “within reach” at next years METS.

Considering the need for careful power consumption I guess that multihull sailors are climate smart in more than one aspect.


/Jan

More yellow trimarans….

No, it’s not the same!


It’s Flexodus!

Peter’s "Flexodus" was test launched this week. It looks very similar to Bernard’s "Eureka", but if you look closely it is not exactly the same. However yellow seems to be the very popular trimaran colour. Since we are in the end of the season, we eagerly have to wait until next season for more Flexodus sailing reports from Denmark.





/Jan

Trimaran Big Catch?

In our pursuit of “Muda” weight (Muda = waste, a key term in the Toyota Way) every small kilo (or actually fraction of kilo) counts. As Stefan says: “You cannot reduce weight by addressing one single area only". Consistent weight chasing and maintenance in all areas of the boat is needed. All major parts are measured and potential deviation is analysed ……and then we have to add filler (of course as little as possible), primer and finally paint, glue and fittings....to be measured on weight again.
On the picture you see Mr Frolow, our team leader for filling, fairing and painting with what looks like a big catch - but it is actually not so big, from a weight point of view at least. It is the horizontal bulkhead in the forward part of the float with a weight of 3,2 kilo. Muda hunting in all areas continues…

/Witek

A different day in the trimaran office

Having had the opportunity to test new sailing waters again, I have to say there are truly many beautiful places to sail and they are really different. We were invited to sail with Sebastian, Kerstin and their daughter Olivia on their Seaon 96crb SUI-1 in Lausanne on Lake Geneva. What a beautiful place! My experience so far from this region is passing by on the high way in winter time on the road to the Alps (well, they are virtually on the other side of the lake). I have always wondered how it would be to sail on this lake.

As always there are regional winds patterns. Sebastian explained light winds are dominating (estimated 60-70% of the time). There are days of northerly “black” (my direct translation….) stronger winds, there are “white” (my translation again…) winds from the south. Maybe I did not properly understand, but a few days before our visit there was a sandy wind (from Sahara) visible on boats (not so nice…) and cars, but is was “sandy” rather than white. Most “different” to what we are familiar to, are the sudden “gusts” of 30+ knots (remember - Sebastian has the two minutes above 25,6 knots on the GPS). Due to this there is an audio visual warning system ashore.

We had however an excellent weather with +20 degrees sun and light winds sailing 2-9 knots of speed at 2-6 knots of wind the higher speeds achieved with the Screacher which with the furler this is a very convenient sail to handle. I wonder however how I would do in racing here….wind was shifting 20-30 degrees (or more) every now and then and wind speed was varying between almost zero and 6 knots (what a feeling to glide in 4 knots of speed with no visible wind on the water and mountains reaching up to more than 2000 meters aside).

Picture: Sebastian, Kerstin, Olivia and Ulrika enjoying a day on the net

Also very different to our sailing waters is that lunch apparently commonly is eaten ashore at some nice harbour at a convenient distance. You can also choose whether to eat in a French or Suisse restaurant. In proper winds France is only an appetizer away.

Even if Lake Geneva is the home of the Decision 35, a multihull “parked” outside the restaurant is always a spectacular view and invites to many spontaneous new contacts and also offers a few minutes of fame, as in this case a blue metallic trimaran is something very “different” which demands a photo to be taken by stunned families passing by on their walk.

Obviously Sebastian also has caused quite a “head spin” for many performance monohull sailors as he passes them beating upwind in his “relaxed monohull headspin position” on the net.

On Sunday we made quick visit to Jacques and his Seaon 96crb SUI 2 (also at Lake Geneva) to check on some general and local improvements suggested by him. Amongst others Jacques thinks there is even some more sail area to be added to the Max Jib.

Another very nice takeaway from the Lake Geneva experience is that I learnt that Mr Bertrand Cardis manager and owner of Decision, the boat yard building Alinghi, Decision 35 and amongst others has been on board on Sebastian’s Seaon. Obviously we are delighted to hear he very much liked the boat and our construction (….Alinghi, Decision 35 using the same pre-preg technology and supplier).

All in all a delightful weekend, even meeting and sailing together with Seaon co-founder Jan Wallmark (now also living at Lake Geneva). Jan as always, is helping out and servicing in all kinds of situations.

Picture: Sebastian, Jan and Jan trimming furiously....

Thank you Sebastian and Kerstin for your kind hospitality!

/Jan

Updated Seaon website Seaon

As some may have noticed we have updated our website slightly (as always - excellent work by Jonas and Anders at agency "Svensson" (www.svenssonreklam.se)). Objective being amongst others:

• High lighting blog/news, where we communicate new pictures, news, events, thoughts and more. (Thanks for comments and feed back! Please continue– it is highly appreciated, potentially also using blog comment facility.)
• We have taken away the forum on the main menu due to little activity and some confusion about when to use the Forum as opposed to Blog. The Forum still exists but will be used for special purposes and on request.
• Also we have uploaded a movie – Experience 1 http://www.seaon.com/movie/mov_short.html (old friends of Seaon will recognise some edited footage they may have seen before).
  

I would also like to take the opportunity to high light that we speak Swedish (or even “Scandinavian”), English, German and to some extent French (mainly written with some assistance). We always enjoy “speaking Multihull” and it is “Multinational”!

We speak English!
Wir sprechen Deutsch!
On parle Francais!
Vi talar ”skandinaviska”!

/Jan

Multihulls in Bretagne – Travel report and lessons learnt

Picture: Michelle, Bernard and Ulrika enjoying life! (And yes - the boat is moving forward!)

Just back from Bretagne with Ulrika (my lovely becoming wife, still having the record of 19,8 knots in Stegesund, a very narrow sound. Only one trimaran can pass at a time – Stockholm sailors know!), having had the opportunity to spend two fantastic days on board of Eureka together with our busy sailor Bernard (owner of Seaon 96crb Eureka) and his wife Michelle. First hand impressions:

1) What a lovely place on earth!
2) Brittany sailors are a tough breed.
3) Some waves (in their terms probably flat sea…) and 15 knots of speed must absolutely not interfere with a proper lunch (measured by French standards)!

Starting off on Saturday just west of St. Malo we headed towards the Ile of Brehat some 40 nm westwards. Initially we had very light winds, less than 5 knots. Later the wind picked up to between 4-8 knots and we set the “Furling Genacker” (new development in last year) logging between 5 and 9 knots in easterly winds (yes – we had to make a few gybes!)

Picture: The Furling Genacker and Bernard meditating or just plain relaxing

Also calculating a change in current direction due to tidal waters….(occasionally up to 3 knots, nothing we are very used to in Stockholm – to say the least) . The “Furling Genacker" is basically a Code Zero, but in order not to mix it up with the Screacher it was named the Furling Genacker.

Picture: Favorit position on the beam - Very light winds....Ulrika focusing on keeping speed above 6 knots (and the famous extra outborder!)

Arriving at Ile de Brehat we very conveniently used the dinghy with a small out border to come a shore from the mooring (now I fully understand why Bernard vigorously has been arguing for the inflatable dinghy on board.....with an extra out border – it is definitely worth the extra kilos even though we are always fighting to reduce weight even with our dear customers). Again sea and shore does not look as we are used to…..up to 12 meters difference between low and high tide. What would we have done without the dinghy….no Taxi around.

Picture: This time Bernard did not need the dinghy..but one is not always lucky to find mooring and timing like this!!

After an excellent dinner, a good night's sleep discovering Bernard’s new innovative companion way night hatch (his foul weather jacket) we were ready for the trip back. The wind now picked up to approx 8-14 knots now from the south. Initially we set the heavy jib for convenient sailing, expecting the wind to increase further (it looked like it would), but then later changing back to the self tacking jib as the wind decreased a little. A part of the trip that took us almost three hours the day before we now managed in one hour at 12-16 knots.

Picture: Bernard and Jan on the windward beam enjoying more wind on the second day

Lunch, a fantastic salad with a delicious dressing (of course home made on the boat!), wine, cappuccino, cookies and chocolate (very far from the usual sandwich and water lunches I am used to!) was served at 15 knots which caused some small problems to keep the smaller salad pieces in the bowel in the aft part of the cock pit. As we got closer to Cap Frehel and home for Eureka the wind pick up again. Speeds up to 19 knots was the perfect “Grand Final” of the marvellous trip and made everybody smile on board (if I get my Firewire driver to work properly I will put up a short footage from my DV cam from the “Grand Final”)

Epilogue – getting closer to shore Bernard took the helm and speeded through narrow passages, made an elegant tour around moored boats, windsurfers and a close 90 degrees gybe at the beach (people were running out of the water….). I was obviously not trusted with this kind of manoeuvres – as I said: Brittany sailors are a tough breed.

Lessons learnt:

* Not many liveable multihulls around (except for the Orma 60 we sighted in St. Malo harbour however a lot of beach cats – Hobies, Darts and 18 footers around) This must be an opportunity!

* Always listen to the customer! Bernard’s strong requirement for the dinghy and out border for this is absolutely righteous.

* We will recommend Bernard his Eureka as “professeur” for the Seaon Sailing Academy

* A few improvement opportunities discovered - more input into Seaon product development

* Some annoying rust stains (however polish able) on various stainless steel equipment (not only one suppliers equipment to be fair)

Again thank you Michelle and Bernard for a fantastic weekend!

/Jan

New visit at Ericsson Volvo Ocean Race 70 Racing Team boatyard

Yesterday we visited the Ericson Volvo Ocean Race 70 shipyard again guided by our team rider Mange Olsson – what a progress since our first visit! The whole boat yard, virtually placed next the Ericsson Head office is now fully operational with products coming out of the ovens. There is even a separate visitor area behind glas overlooking the whole shipyard where there is a constant flow of impressed visitors looking at this very high tech boat building project. There are routers, ovens, freezers (for the carbon pre-preg) various rooms for various type of milling, lamination, lathing etc operations. It is a complete real professional shipyard building a 70 fot high tech ocean racer in midst of Stockholm Telecom city Kista! (Want to know more about the secrets about the Ericsson Racing team boat yard ? Check http://www.ericssonracingteam.com/video.html )
Obviously there is an envy from our side on the scale of operation, however there are also as mentioned before some strong similarities with our production: Freezers, ovens, different kind of QA tools such as curing temperature supervision, adhesion testing equipment, loadcells etc paintbox, fairing and filling room etc …..and we use the same supplier and carbon pre-preg system from Advanced Composite Group in the UK (http://www.acg.co.uk/ also supplier to Americas Cup winner Alinghi).

/Jan

A report from a "typical" Lake Geneva trimaran day....

Sebastian reports from yesterday:

"Just came back from a record breaking family sailing.
Start at 1 pm wind speed 7 knots from SW heading just north of west averaging 9.5 knots on the GPS. Wonderful weather and rapidly catching up with ESSE 8.50 on same course. We tack and head east moving on at around 10 knots under full main and screacher and then go back towards Pully in decreasing wind speed. We observe boats along the Swiss coast move with lots of wind from n-NE, we are still with a southerly less than three miles away. Screacher taken down, self tacker unrolled and within 3 minutes we have a north easterly at 35 knots steady with gusts well above 40 knots. Two reefs taken rapidly but no smaller head/sail than the self tacker. Thanks Matte for keeping the small jib in your loft!! Course 320 degrees, speed mounts to well above 20 knots with peak on the GPS of 25.6 for over 2 minutes. Constant spray over the leeward forward cross-beam but the leeward bow is well above the surface and the boat runs like a TGV across the French countryside. Stable like a rock. For once we take the sails down outside the harbour and motor in. Good reason to run over to the restaurant and fetch a bottle of iced champagne, a cooler and four glasses. Olivia was playing on the windward net all along, Kerstin was scared to death but the two guys on board thought this was terrific."




Kerstin - cool at the helm



Well - what to say?

1) We hope Kerstin got a lot of champagne
2) A fine trimaran day
3) You do not always need to sail at 25+ knots.....there are slower gears (if not left with the sail maker)

/Jan

Multihull sailing - Racing or Cruising?

Multihull sailing - Racing or Cruising?

Every now and then the issue about “multihull sailing for who” is brought up, meaning what are the characteristics of the typical multihull sailor. As always there is no black and white answer. However what we frequently see is that speed (….even in our story telling…) is emphasized a lot and with speed comes racing. In our case this is actually not true, potentially we have not fully brought forward what it is about – an experience which makes sailing and nature even greater.
Yes we have a lot of action and racing pictures and movies, however the vast majority of the time our Seaon sailors just sail for fun and great pleasure – with their families including children and even grand children from age of a few months to grown up. There is Alex and Henrik who sail with their families and young ones across the Baltic from Sweden to Finland, there is Bernard who enjoys the waters outside Bretagne with his grand children, there is Sebastian in Lausanne who is sailing with his family as much as times permit (almost daily that is…. And actually always docking with sails – Captain Sebastian principally does not allow the use of the engine except if there is absolutely no wind).
This is why we get somewhat astonished when we get the question: “Can you go cruising with a Seaon? Can it be sailed by a “normal” (!? Let’s not define “normal” at this time!) sailor? Do people sail with their children? Obviously the answer is YES! And obviously it means we have to think more about the “evangelism” we are preaching (we are not religious ….but very passionate!)

We have mentioned it before – we designed the Seaon 96crb to satisfy our sailing (and to some extent racing) vanity, but mostly to fulfil a joyful (with families!) sailing experience, where amongst other the production technology we use help us to make the boat easy to handle due to less need of sail area. The high stability and high speed of trimarans demand very hard work by the crew when handling large genoas. Beating upwind in a narrow strait with our self tacker jib is a real pleasure.

/Jan

Stockholm Archipelago – explored from a trimaran

Stockholm Archipelago is truly a beautiful place. Obviously coming from Stockholm we are “slightly” biased, however Herve Hillard from excellent French magazine Voiles & Voiliers seemed to be very excited about the Archipelago having explored it on a Seaon during a week this summer. We are looking forward to his report in Voiles & Voiliers later this autumn!

/Jan