Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

Our 2015 has started out well. With all races finishing on the podium in Thursday buoy, Sunday buoy, and Saturday Around the Inland races, we are set up well. The team(s) are working well together and the boat is really dialed in. Here's a couple of excepts from our regular GoPro recordings: A Sunday race in 20 knots, short-handed but we fly the 'big one' anyway. We're rewarded with a blistering downwind run. An upwind leg after a rounding, splitting the J/24 fleet on its way down.

I'm in the process of replacing my thrust bearing in my keel screw assy; as one of the races has broken. These parts are NOT available from Beneteau, but they were kind enough to send along the mechanical drawing that show the exact sizes of the bearings. The drawing is shown below, and the PDF version is HERE if anyone wants the detailed drawing.

In the past we have struggled with the performance of the First 260 in lighter airs. It's clear that with her fixed non-overlapping jib and large wetted surface area, the boat was never going to be a superstar in light (3-6 kts) conditions, but we knew (or hoped!) that we could make the boat faster. While some of the tricks are common for many boats (lighten the boat/crew, keeping weight off the transom, etc, one of the biggest and 260-specific changes we made was switching to a dedicated set of rig tunes for light airs. We are now quite happy with her performance in the light. As we do this on our First 36.7, we attempted to do so as well on the 260, but in hindsight we failed to make enough bands to allow the rig to be quite loose in light airs. It was (and still is!) quite a work in progress as there is no official tuning guide for the boat, and the general guidelines for swept-fractional rigging setting makes for a setup WAY too tight for light airs. The KEY is to allow t...

As the skipper of a boat that races a lot of windward/leeward courses, I have long thought that the optional(!) First 260 traveler was less than ideal. Too short, too low, too hard to work. So I set out trying to work on a better solution. The trick was that the placement of the cockpit lockers made a wide bar problematic. But a wider, higher bar was the ideal solution, even if it meant some compromises in other areas. The first clue came when I found a picture (below) of a First 260 in France that had been modified with a cockpit-wide traveler. This is interesting because it has the bar mounted in the ONE possible place where it does not interfere with either the lockers or the wooden seat rails, and is still under the boom. Ideally, it is exactly at boom end. I had thought of this as an option, but it took seeing it done once to commit me to action. It has the effect of shrinking the driver area by about 4 inches. The tiller clearly had to be cut shorter, but the bar looked good. S...

This turned up today.... interesting details of a rudder mod for the First 260 drawn by none other than Pascal Conq! Understood to be the actual designer of the First 260 at Conq/Finot, this work was done as a favor for a First 260 owner who happened to be an editor at Voile et Voiliers magazine, the largest sailing magazine in France. The 200mm extension of the rudders is said to ease the helm pressures and angles when sailing under maximum sail pressure. This in practice should yield better speed through the water. Although this has not been short-listed on my 260 projects queue, I would be very keen to see it in action. You can download the drawing and work guide HERE . This was originally made available only to VetV subscribers; if you set out to mod your rudders to this plan, may I suggest you buy the current copy at your newsstand? I would be interested if anyone takes this project on.

I have been able to get out a few times by ourselves this fall. During the summer with Kestrel on Lake Superior and the WYC racing on Thursdays, we don't get too many days just sailing on BlueJ. But in October, after kestrel is done for the season and before the Frostbite Cup and the Shackleton races, there are some truly awesome days; nice winds, open waters, and amazing light. We had another the Sunday after the last Commodore Cup. The Vikings (American football team for my European friends) were playing keeping even more boats off the lake, so shared it with only a few sailboats. As much as we like full-crewed sailing, we really love the pleasure of effectively double handing a powerful sailboat. Good times.

The WYC Commodore Cup is a 4 week series held in the fall. The typical October breeze is good, and gives us a chance in a multi-week series. The trick is not to miss any, or you have to use your one discard on a DNC. We sailed very well... in the picture below from race 4 we are actually the leading PHRF boat and in the midst of the fleet that started before us. As to results; 3rd place, one point out of 2nd. Of the 4 races we won one outright, and had a 2nd. If we had been able to beat Stinger in the last race (1st and not 2nd) we would have taken 2nd from Synergy on the tiebreaker. Factoring in we had to use our discard on a DNC I'm rather pleased at the result. Interesting that we had a BLAST short handing the 3rd race, but light airs and limited ability to swap spins probably cost us a few places in that race. Best moments were surfing downwind behind the island in 20+ knots in race 2, and leading the PHRF fleet around the Lafayette buoy in the final (light ai...