Although not exactly an oldy in age
terms (she was built in 1995) she is an old design with the masts and
booms made of wood in the traditional way. As too were the blocks and
I could have sworn one or two sheets were hemp. There was enough
varnish work to keep the crew busy for most of the season without her
even leaving the dock.
The Zuca et a Moana is the largest
sailing yacht that I have ever sailed on. There was no roller furlers
or push button winches. Everything was manual.
Before each tack, either the Queen or
Fisherman had to be lowered and then as we tacked the opposite number
would be raised...manually.
Racing as many of you will know, is all
about long windward legs at the start and finish and plenty of
tacking in between. Raising sails, unlike on Orion where I can pop
the main up singlehanded, involves 8 to 10 people. Winches are not
used for raising these bad boys. It involves one or two people
“sweating” (pulling the halyard) while someone else keeps a hold
of the line by tailing it. Friction is applied by running the halyard
around a belaying pin (those wood pins that look like skinny ten pins
that you see ropes attached to on the side of old wood sailing ships
in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean etc). Generally two people
work in tandem to sweat the sail up and it involves pulling the
halyard down with all your body weight and then moving it towards the
belaying pin so that the tailer can take up the slack.
Do this a good few times and the very
next day you feel like you have been roughed up by Mike Tyson except
you will still have your ears.
Half way though a tack one of the
belaying pins used to secure the Queens aft halyard snapped with an
almighty bang. The pin itself flicked all the way across the deck and
overboard. We were hurtling along at 13 knots and had a large piece
of canvas flogging in the wind 100 foot above us. A couple of quick
orders from the first mate and we were lowering the remaining halyard
and using the sheets to man handle the sail back on deck before it
became a sizeable sea anchor.
With a 143ft of boat of which over
100ft was waterline length, needless to say she made some good speed.
The consistent trade winds did not disappoint and 15 knots of breeze
was more than sufficient to power her along at 13knots. The regatta
staggers the start times as it would be a bit hairy for little sub
40ft yachts to be dicing a start line with 150ft behemoths. Needless
to say our class was one of the last to start (up to 1 hour after the
first fleet sets off).
It is then fantastic to watch us reel
in the fleet as we top out hull speed and in all her magnificence
sail under all the smaller yachts. Being about 10feet from the water,
it is also very dry on board and low heel due to her weight / size
makes it easy to power through the swell while the rest of the
significantly smaller yachts “hobby horse” over each wave.
Unfortunately I only raced for 2 of the
4 days on Zuca et a Moana. On day two they had me trimming the
foresail (the gaff sail up forward rather than the main which is the
larger and nearest the stern). So after a day of cranking sails up
and down, I now spent my time grinding on an enormous winch the
diameter of an oil drum. I dreaded the call for a gybe, which would
be given almost half a mile from the mark we were rounding. It meant
that I had to start sheeting in the foresail. Even though the winches
had 3 gear ratio's, it was still slow work. Especially if we were
hard on the wind pre gybe. Rounding the mark 2 or 3 crew would
manually haul in as much sheet as possible while I tailed it all and
then eased it out once we had rounded.
There was too much wind to fly the
spinnaker, but she did have one! And THAT would have been something
to see / do. Ah well there is always next year :)
Over the two days I got to meet the
crew and skipper, all of whom were from western Europe and fairly new
to the boat except the skipper. The skipper really knew his boat.
This was a 143ft, 150ton steel vessel with non of the mod cons that
modern yachts have in the form of bow and stern thrusters etc. Yet he
magnificently steered her in and out of a crowded marina with a good
side wind and onto the dock with the skill and precision of a Hartley
Street surgeon. Quite a feat to watch.
The regatta was full of these beautiful
yachts. There was a few hundred tons of varnish used on all the boats
and they all gleamed. Racing was not as serious as I thought it would
be with most people on the yachts armed with cameras snapping away at
the fleet as they whizzed past each other.
By far the most impressive are the big
gaff rigged yachts with their full array of sails up. The sheer size
and scale is something to behold.
Life is all about experiences. This for
me was a one of those experiences. I have now set my sights on
crewing on a square rigger!
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