Onboard the Big Cat

What sets it apart from the rest of the speed sailing records is the extreme length of it.

You can try it with any size and type of boat you want, you just can’t have powered winches. It would have been very nice to have had powered winches on Cheyenne. (it takes 5 grinders 7-10 minutes to go from 2nd to 1st reef ) Along the way we set 6 additional records for various segments of the entire course.

My official title was Sail Coordinator. Along with the sails I had to look after the luff hardware and battens. Fortunately three years of work at Halsey Lidgard Sailmakers paid off and the sails, battens and hardware all performed exceptionally. We broke the head of the Blast reacher due to too much tension on the sail and not enough on the luff rope, and because of fatigue.(the sail was one of the oldest on board). But it was easily repaired and after the lashing on the luff was eased the sail was fine the rest of the trip.

Durability and performance were the two keys to the success of the sail inventory. These goals were both surpassed. As the down time due to repairs in the sail dept was about 8 hours total with 4 of that for a broken batten. The mainsail was great and only needed one small hand sewing repair. It held its shape well and was used and abused the entire 58 days. What the main was good other than making the boat go fast was breaking various parts of the rig. The entire crew was very impressed with sails speed and durability. The sail development work began just after The Race in 2001. In that event the boat was forced to withdraw due to sail problems. Halsey Lidgard Mystic got to work and provided a solution for Cheyenne's sail problems.

Sailing the boat fast was never a problem. Anytime the wind was over 25 we would begin to slow the boat down. Although the sails were doing well the rig was not. There was a constant onboard rig maintenance program going on from Cape Town to the finish.

Some of the highlights of the rig problems were headstay pulling out of the furling drum. The Norseman type fitting fell out of the end of the wire and the carbon headfoil was holding everything up. We were downwind so no danger but with sail on the furler we could not tell what was going on, just that there was so much headstay sag that the top swivel was laying against the rig and we could not unfurl the Solent for a jibe. When it was all sorted out we had broken the headfoil but saved the wire (all the Norseman pieces were in the drum) and the Solent went from a furling sail to a hank on. All and all it cost us 10 to 12 hours, or 200 miles. From then on we needed a powered winch for the halyard. The other big rig problem was the mainsails ability to rip the halyard locks off the mast. This happened twice once at first reef and the other at full hoist. Main down, guys up the rig, and boat going slow were the results. At the approach to Cape Horn this cost us about 2 days as we missed a weather window and got stuck in a light spot while we slowed to repair. Dave, Damian, Mike, and Justin all did an excellent job with the repairs and there was now way of knowing when the best time to fix it would be. Do you wait for better weather after the Horn or just go for it. In hindsight it may have been better to wait but that is to hard a call to make in the middle of it all. The next time the lock broke we lost very little, as we had enough breeze to sail fine with a reef, then repair in lighter conditions just after the Horn. A third time would have been very bad, as there were not enough spare parts left to make another halyard lock repair. Lash the main at full hoist and go was the consensus if we had another lock failure. The headboard car had a large crack in it, but we had no onboard welding or machine shop to repair it. Fortunately when the sail was hoisted the crack was not large enough to see so we did not worry about it.

Another small but annoying issue was the forward beam to hull attachment bearing was seized and slowly cracking apart for most of the trip. It was jury rigged and held on but definitely caused some gray hairs.

When things were going well and we were making 500 plus miles a day (at one point we had 7 consecutive 500 mile days) it was fairly routine. Off watch for four, standby for four and sail fast for four. I usually got about 6 hours sleep out of 24. Standby was easy unless there were a lot of sail changes or ongoing repairs. The crew did an outstanding job of keeping it together mentally through the big losses. The worst was when our 2200-mile lead evaporated to about 600 in 3 days. It was also quite tough when we were becalmed just north of the equator and the weather guys wanted us to be 300 miles east of were we were. A waypoint that was dead downwind of us with 6 knots true wind speed. I think the ETA on the GPS was two months. The weather guys (Commanders Weather) did an excellent job.

Each RTW sailing trip is unique and has its own positives and negatives. The best part of this one was getting the record. For that alone is the difference between success and failure.

Thank you to the crew.

Steve, Adrienne, Dave, Brian, Jackie, Damien, Justin, Nick, Mike, Fraser, Mark and Guillermo.

Whirly van Dyke