Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

 BlueJ had her best season on the water to date. A combination of great crew, solid boat prep, and the right sails led to: 1st - B Series 1st - M Series 1st - Burton Cup 1st - MS Cup 1st - Commodore Cup 2nd - G Series 2nd - Sunset Series Highlights: 33 races attended 23 races completed (delta mostly abandons to to lack of breeze) 13 WINS 22 podiums (only one race off, a 4th in very light air) The new Code 0 is a WEAPON 3 races won double-handed. A real testament to the boat, and crew Won the Commodore Cup. While we're won individual races, never the whole thing! We used the boat as a true racer/cruiser, with more night on anchor than the combined club! The 'Tindy' Sunday crew was a blast, and prepped us all for: A 15 day sail in Greece on a 30-foot sportboat, and we still managed to do all of this! Quite the year. I'll let a bunch of pictures tell the rest of the story!

 Well thats year 1 in the bag for the Code Zero, and we could not be happier with it. In a nutshell: We won all but one mid-distance race we entered (One 2nd place, sailed SOLO) Very versatile wind angle and speed range. Allowed for THREE double handed wins vs fully crewed boats Allows for good speed in wind holes that used to kill us With velcro strips at the clew, we can leave it up before or after deployment without worry. We did have to double jacket the spin halyard at the area around the clutch, as the load would pull it out! In the picture above, we are power reaching at 7+ knots and the spin halyard (pre-jacket) is in the aft winch as an extra lock.. Some notes: Fore SURE jacket the halyard as noted above Not a sail to hand-trim. On a winch 100% of the time. Twings are required to help control the luff and shape. LOTS of tell-tails. Luff, body, leach. 3 rows. Try and keep most flying, just like a genoa Learn your cut-offs between jib-code-asym. Its easy to sail too long on ...

 Light air buoy race in the bay. BlueJ wins, correcting over the fleets scratch boat (Soling with yellow kite) to help secure the M Series trophy. Conditions were marginal but the RC started hoping it would build and not fade. In light airs (less than 5 knots) we will often foot to keep moving and to get into better breeze. But in the end we catch up to the Soling, and half the previous start!

  While modern non-overlapping boats are very versatile, everyone that sails them knows that they suffer reaching in light airs. The smaller jib bas no chance matching the power of a large genoa, and the wind angle is too tight for a spinnaker. A Code 0 is the obvious answer, but that requires a secure tack-point in front of the bow and clear of the bow pulpit. As the 260 had no solution as delivered, several years ago I fabricated a mock-up out of cardboard with a plan to have it made in aluminum. And while this was workable and would also have allowed for an asym to be tacked there are well, I did not proceed because it complicated another sore-spot with the boat, and that is anchoring. The 260 has no real bow roller, and retrieving a plow anchor with the plumb bow involves a high-wire acrobat's skills holding the anchor clear while pulling in the chain. The sprit would have made it worse. So I waited. Salvation arrived in the form of a picture on a European-based First260 FB gro...

With the headsail sheets on the cabintop, the single set of Lewmar 16STs on the First 260 do reasonable triple duty. They manage the halyards and control lines, they control the genoa sheets, and the also trim the spinnaker sheet and guy. This is normally manageable due to careful placement of lines, winches and the sheet-lock. But there ARE times when a dedicated set of spin winches would come in handy! On BlueJ we normally race with a crew of 4. This works great but it is VERY busy in maneuvers. In this setup, during a gibes and douses the driver steers with the tiller between in legs, and runs the sheets and guy, timing so the foredecker can manage the big kite. In this model, the cabintop winches are very hard to use. You can see in this video the basic steps of our maneuver. We have found that a 2nd pair of small Lewmar ST winches, mounted on the side decks make for the best solution. In our application, we have a set of Lewmar 14ST winches mounted on 1.5 inch risers, si...

As a 1996 model, BlueJ came with a Z-Spars Z265 mast and spreader tips that did not lock the shrouds to the tip. Modern rigging best-practice has the shrouds locked in place so the spreader cannot move up or down on the shroud. I figured it was time to upgrade. The tips currently available from Z-spars (US-Spars in the USA) are a new design that DO lock the shroud in place. Also, the casing is a more robust female-type. Does anyone know when the new part became standard? I assume it did and was rolled into Beneteau production s well. The rigger-recommended way to set the spreader tip point is to mark the shroud at the point it crosses the spreader at the mast. See the Elan video below. If you think about it, this captures the exact spot where the angles above and below the spreader are the same. Which is the goal!

The 2017 WYC racing season is over and its time to look at the year as a whole.  First the numbers. 36 races attended 31 races sailed 21 podiums 9 wins 5 trophies That's pretty awesome. We were on the podium in 2/3rds of our races sailed, and WON almost a 1/3 of them. This with a new crew rotation and my treatment running all of August, pretty impressive. Call outs. First to  Brendan  for his great work on the bow, trim, and help with tactics. The boat is really a different place when you are there. Jean  for great improvement on pit this year, really a great job. And also for trimming head-sail when we where short. To  Jodi  wow amazing. First year on the boat and racing. I always want you there on main because you give us our best chance to win. You've gotten that good. Keith  great fill in on Bow for the Commodore Cups, we were really starting to click at the end. Byron  awesome work all-round. You can step in anywh...