December 12, 2020-Making the Red Dragon

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The Dragon

 Sometimes we get these ideas that are really dumb. We don’t exactly know where they come from and if we’re smart we just let them pass.

But when Luis pulled the Red Dragon out of the bag onto the grass I was inspired, I had to have that spinnaker. It was so…stunning.

But it was a dumb idea.

Who in God’s name needs a 2.2 oz blood red symmetrical spinnaker with a giant dragon on it. Especially since we never have the kind of strong winds here in Mexico where you would need such a sail, and if we did have those kind of winds we wouldn’t be flying a spinnaker, and anyhow I already have a heavy duty symmetrical spinnaker, which is also nearly new.

And what’s with the red color and the Chinese dragon? I have no connection with China.

But this sail was so beautiful! And, while second hand, it was apparently unused (no surprise, who would ever use it?).  And the price was right, very right. Oh I wanted that sail.

Then I had an inspiration: What I did need was a heavy duty asymmetrical spinnaker to fly on those windy reaches we have here so often. Why not recut this sail into an asymmetrical? With its weight it would be bullet-proof.

So I bought it.

Now recutting a symmetrical spinnaker into an asymmetrical might be a bit tricky I thought, especially if I want it to work well enough for racing, and what did I know of such things? Nothing.

But no harm in trying, and actually, I was sure it would turnout all right, I never believe that things won't turn out OK when I start a project. I just plow into them, you could call it over confidence. Any anyhow, if it doesn’t work, Luis wants it back to make kites out of it. I’ve got nothing to lose.

First we had to take a look at it.

We got some of the crew one day and went out to put it up and see what shape it had.

The Dragon, in symmetrical form

Everybody likes it

It was big and a bit flat (OK) and it had narrow shoulders (also OK) and a narrow head (also OK, really OK). It was also pretty. I took some photos. Now I was really encouraged.

Back home I did some research into asymmetrical spinnaker dimensions, and played around with Photoshop until I could create an image of what it would look like as an asymmetrical.

Cut out on the white lines

Next Judy and I hauled it and the Sailrite sewing machine up to the VIP room and tore into it. We measured and cut and taped and sewed. Seven hours later we had an asymmetrical. Retaining the dragon logo in the middle made the job a little trickier, but I found a way around that.

Sewing

Now to try it out.

We were scheduled to sail on in the Beer Can Race on Wednesday so when the crew arrived I told them we were going to again use the Dragon, but now it was an asymmetrical. They shrugged, “Whatever you say, Fred.”

But it worked!

Terry sets the Dragon, asymmetrical mode

Oh I saw some flaws and the leech needed some re-shaping, and we had trouble jibing it, but it definitely worked as an asymmetrical. The crew thought it was fine.

Back in the “loft” for a second re-cut. This required less time.

And back on the boat for the next Wednesday’s race we gave the dragon a real workout. We still had trouble jibing, but the sail worked even if my steering didn’t. After the race, in which we were last, we went back upwind for more practice. We got the jibes sorted out. Then we decided to see what that sail could do.

In 15 knots of wind we came up onto a reach. No problem.

Then a tighter reach. Still no problem.

Then a really tight reach. Apparent wind at about 45 degrees. WOW!

Flat Sail, Hard Reaching

That Dragon transformed itself. Downwind it was full but when strapped tight it became flat. It really was gorgeous! And the power was forward, where it was needed. Wing’s rudder had no problems holding that sail in that wind, It was Fun! Everyone was grinning. What power, what speed!

Hard Reaching Fun

So we don’t know if it will really be fast (compared to other boats, I mean) but we’ll find out soon enough, and in the meantime, we had some real fun doing it.

Sometimes dumb ideas work out.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huanacaxtle, Mexico

PS. Where did this sail come from?

There was a boat here for a few years with an absentee owner. He’d gone to China, apparently (funny, so there was a China connection with this sail) and some say he met a girl there and wasn’t coming back. He stopped paying his berthing fees, we were told, He also stopped paying Luis to maintain the boat.

“Sell the sails and get your money that way.” He wrote to Luis.

Then the marina foreclosed on the boat and sold it, but Luis still had the sails. I helped Luis flog the sails and when it came to the red one, he gave me a good price.

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Coming In

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz, Mexico

December 3, 2020-Alarife Rising

On a summer night in 2018 pandemonium broke out in La Cruz. It was 9:30 PM and a wild squall had just rolled through the area, including through the fleet anchored offshore. Then we heard over the radio the words any sailor would dread to hear, “Alarife is dragging, Alarife is dragging! It’s on the rocks”. 

Our hearts were broken, if it truly was on the rocks, the iconic Holland 41 Alarife would be lost. No boat around here has survived that. People were braving the storm to try to affect a rescue, but it was hopeless. 

The next morning the worst was evident: Alarife was sunk. The divers reported large holes in the hull. It couldn’t have been worse. But this story has a good ending. 

Today, two years later, thanks to a handful of local sailors who put in a lot of hard work, and not a little money, Alarife is rebuilt and sailing again. 

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Alarife sunk

The racing yacht Alarife has had a long storied career. Built in 1981 in Mexico for Manuel Vasquez in collaboration with Ron Holland, the designer, Alarife had a successful racing record among the hottest racing boats of the day in Mexico. As a sister ship to the famous Imp from San Francisco, it should have been. Over the course of at least two subsequent owners the boat continued to race In Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. Mike Danielson of PV sailing, who was involved in the racing program on Alarife, remembers, “We had at one point a crew of mostly teenagers from Mexico City coming down to crew on the races, so it was really a youth program. And on non-race days we sailed the boat all over the Bay.” 

Eventually though, the boat had changed hands again and was put into charter service doing day sails on the bay with small groups. While still showing up from time to time on the race course, it was mostly kept on the hook in the anchorage at La Cruz. 

After being refloated, a volunteer effort of local cruisers and Mike from PV sailing (“I just couldn’t bear to give up on the old girl”), Alarife came into limbo. The boat needed to be lifted from the water and put into the boat yard. The yard, however, wouldn’t save the boat without money up front. The owner couldn’t come up with that kind of cash. There she floated, suspended by 18 large barrels filled with air with nowhere to go. 

Click here to read more about the wreck. 

The angel that day (Alarife has seen a few angels) was Gil Drory, of Chica Loca Tours, who fronted the money and took ownership of the boat. The travel lift fired up and Alarife was hauled out, water pouring out the massive holes in her hull.

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On The hard 

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Big Hole (one of five) 

On the stands in the La Cruz boat yard Alarife looked hopeless. There were holes big enough to crawl though, the rudder was broken, the keel chewed in half, the engine shot. The rig was pulled, the deck stripped, and parts of the boat seemingly disappeared into thin air. You could say, “looted”. 

Some work was being done but the progress was slow. We all wondered why bother, it couldn’t be worth as much as it would take to fix it, if that was even possible. 

A year went by. 

Then one day we saw that Alarife had been moved to another corner of the yard and was covered with tarps. The sounds of grinding was coming out of that pile of tarps. We saw the keel being reshaped, the rudder being remade. When things were quiet we crawled under the tent to see what was going on. Amazingly the hull was being repaired. 

We wondered who was doing it? Who would take on such a project? 

The newest Alarife “angels” were Pepe Martin del Campo and Gabriela Romero Carlin. Pepe and Gabi had a cruising sailboat already but they wanted a racing boat. “Maybe it was a crazy idea”, they admitted to me, but they took it on with a dream to have Alarife sailing and racing again. Why? Pepe said to me, “I was a cowboy, a rancher; I have a ranch at Lagos Moreno up in the center of Mexico, but I wanted to be a man of the sea, so I sold my cows and came down here to Banderas Bay. Gabi is from a sailing family already; her grandfather is Ramon Carlin (who shocked the yachting world by captaining his yacht Sayula II to victory in the first Whitbread Around the World race in 1973. Now, that is a story in itself, but one for another day.) 

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At Work 

These two are hands-on people. Who was up to his elbows in fiberglass dust for months? Pepe. Who do I see cleaning, polishing, and sorting all the bits of hardware that was rescued from the four corners of the boatyard? Gabi. So this is truly their work of passion. 

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Re-Launching 

I joined Pepe and Gabi and several of their friends on Alarife’s first sail in November and the boat sailed like a dream, like a dream come true. They drank champagne after that sail. 

Of course there is more work to do, it is a sailboat after all, and there is always work to be done, but since that first sail they made it to the start line for a Wednesday Beer Can Race and Alarife looked good. They have been talking to Gil and are making plans to do Team Building Match Racing charters against Wings. Now won’t that be something? 

But it would be just one more new life for Alarife. 

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Alarife 

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huanacaxtle