Following the discovery of this new Class one year ago, I have the pleasure of posting my first Sprinta regatta report.
Day One:
This annual event is organised by the designer & manufacturer of the Sprinta Christian Ramoser, GER 007 & was held this year at Aidenried on Ammersee, Germany amongst the beautiful rolling landscape in Bayern just south of Munich where the men love their beer, and the cows are allowed to eat grass outside & Kangaroos have bouncing balls, still not sure what this means (always thought they bounced anyway…)
The event was held over two days with Saturday designated as training and tuning day that is always appreciated by us green horns with Sprinta to learn the latest tips & tricks from the veterans in the class. To my knowledge (?) this is the only RC sailing class in the world that uses a Genoa headsail, using single winch drum to control both Main and Genoa, a complicated concept that was simplified by Christian Ramoser when he scaled his original Sprinta Supersport to the Sprinta RC using the super fast RMG that helps makes this very successful RC sailing class with over 90 boats now been built.
For those interested you can read my Sprinta RC (Steinlager NZL-069) assembly thread here.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1479438
When I picked up my boat last year Christian gave me the run down on basic set-up that included having forward rake on the mast, being a fixed mast step I’d often thought was little different and had been playing with mast tilt and changing ballast but was never completely satisfied that I’d ever got it right, so this first day I wanted to learn from the Sprinta Masters.
I should have known there is as many different opinion as there are boats (remember this it is one boat design class with all boats coming from the same mould) … hmmm ok thought I would firstly start out with standard recommended setup and take it from there, I’d met up with Torsten Hill (Tiny Tor) a super cool & jolly guy who had most radical setup on his Monster (GER 019) and we trained together, swapping boats and notes.
The wind on Saturdayy afternoon was 11-15 knots with small waves (no caps) and logic said mast should be tilted forward with 800 grams ballast in the stern, but Tiny Tor had his mast racked back a few cms from norm, with no ballast, his boat felt like it sailed more in the groove upwind compared to mine and he quickly jerry rigged my forestay so it was roughly two cms longer & bingo I was on the pace with the top skippers.
With the Sprinta being having wide beam and shallow rocker I could only conclude that the stronger wind speed pushed the bow down more upwind (without the stern ballast) that brought the CE back into a balanced helm position in 11-15 knot wind range.
Down wind was completely different story, the big Genoa sail area is very difficult get the windows open (wing-on-wing) unless you use a batten in the foot of the Genoa that helps keep the Genoa open. The Sprinta comes with 3 x 0.5 mm carbon batten that you can slide into a pocket.
I personally find the standard batten to be too short and stiff to have controlled chamber and looking at other boats the best tip found was to use a full length tapered batten (progressive chamber) that had lot of flex (very thin) that Ludwig Ressle was using on his GER 055, I didn’t have anything on hand so had to settle for my stiffer short batten that later in day two snapped in half.
This is what happens running when you don’t have batten in the foot of the Genoa
With constant wind on the afternoon of the first day, we all had fun banging the cans and with myself getting used to using a Genoa control on the transmitter, this take some getting used too compared to traditional Jib set-up, but with well controlled tack the boat goes about very smoothly, just like a big boat, get it wrong and can get into all sorts of trouble (which I did often) just like big boats.
Trick from Tiny Torstens Monster was to change winch control on the transmitter from up-down (starboard-port) to left-right on the sail stick, for me it felt much more natural having port on left & starboard on right stick position.
The numb skull skipper of Steinlager, NZL 069 (namely me) had a Kiwi blond moment when my receiver died on me & on changing over to new one I put the winch cable into the wrong channel slot and spend next two hours trouble-shooting including dissembling the transmitter and the RMG looking for loose connection or something only to have Tiny Tor walk up and have quick look and tell me that the RMG winch cable was in the power channel and not where it should be in channel 3 …remember the RMG controls power from battery through winch channel & you don’t have cable coming directly from the battery …sheesh Kiwi, shet happens uh !
Then late in the afternoon Michael Hirsch Sprinta, Conch Republic (GER 080) got tangled with another boat on the Lee buoy that ended in beaching of both boats, no visible hull damage was evident and both were quickly back on the water, but few minutes later Michaels boat was not handling normally and he brought it dockside to find the two blocks at the stern for the Genoa circuit had disappeared (exploded) only the bolts were left in the deck and the circuit line had cut itself into hull, can only guess there was a jam in the Genoa circuit when boat was beached and the brutal power from the RMG caused the damage.
Saturday ended with lot of happy faces after great training day on the water and we all meet up for dinner together and exchanging ideas. Michael worked through the evening and managed to have GER 080 ready for race day.
as Calle Scholz with Musto (GER 058) posted a 9,12 & Ludwig Ressle (GER 055) posted 6,3 and Christian Ramoser (GER 007) came in with a 3,6 …the beer was working !!! however a sleeper popped up :weeping: with Armin Selinka with Candida (GER 011)