BANJO GIRL COMPETES WELL IN RACE DOWN THE COAST

[JayZ]

Hello All,

We just had the opportunity to race BANJO GIRL down the coast in our annual 150nM sail from Galveston to Port Aransas. We had about 185 boats show up with 30 or so in the cruising spinnaker class, 30 in the racing class and the rest divided between nonspin and multi-hull. The rules are such that if you fly a symmetrical spinnaker with a pole they lump you up with the race boats. ...big j-boats, go fast planing hulls and such. I didn't have an assymetrical kite so I borrowed one from a friend's J-109 so I could compete with the cruising class. The J-109 spin fit really well but mind you Banjo Girl's rig is a bit taller than a stock Caravelle and of course it is one of the Hodgdon boats with the larger fore-triangle.

The race was off the wind for the duration of the race. We had a beam reach start with the wind moving aft and oscillating from about 5-13 knots apparent for the entire race (more breeze at the start). We started the race with the New Main (first time up was at the start) the genoa staysail that we just rigged up(more on that later) and then at the gun we rolled out the high clew 140%. We had a pretty fresh breeze and were moving very well. We watched the other boats in our fleet try to carry their spinnakers but most of them were really fighting it. As soon as the wind went a little lighter a tad further aft we lauched the assymetrical spinnaker. At this point we weren't sure how she was going to repond but very quickly realized we were simply weaving through the fleet like a sports car weaving through traffic on the freeway.

The breeze was a little shifty with the new wind coming in and a lot of times the rhumb line would prefer you sail dead down wind if possible (hard to do with an assym). We had great crew who were up to the task. The big shoulders on the J-109 a kite really allowed us to sail deep ....much deeper than the typical genneker driven boats. We had to gybe maybe 4 or so times. I think we would have been faster with a proper poled out spinnaker but we were still faster than most of the fleet. ...in fact if it weren't for a navigational mishap (3 hours) we would have finished 3rd maybe 4th( boat for boat uncorrected time) behind a J-40 a C&C 57 and possibly a Beneteau 473 but I think we'd have beat that one in. Ultimately we won our class and took third in fleet after handicap corrections were calculated.

At any rate with the modified taller rig along with the genoa staysail (hanked onto a Dynex Dux sythetic stay), the high cut genoa and of course the 109 kyte we had the boat really sailing well.

The fresh awlgrip pain, fresh varnish and of course the beautiful John Alden lines and Hodgdon construction ensured that BANJO GIRL was the prettiest boat in the fleet. (sounds like bragging but I know most of you on this site would agree)

The trip home was equally as good. We had the wind at about 45-60 degrees off with the full main, genoa staysail and high clew 140% genoa all flying. I locked the wheel down (no autopilot on Banjo Girl yet) and in about 10-13 knots of breeze we didn't have to touch the wheel for almost 5 hours. The old Alden just sailed herself like it was nothing.

I've included a few pics from the weekend to share. ...I am really starting to like this boat.

Cheers,
Jay Z.

 

[TomY]

Those are wonderful photos Jay. She's a beautiful boat and it's nice to see it's still competitive. Thanks for posting them.

 

[JayZ]

...well a year later and the old girl does it again.

We just recently competed in our annual 150 nautical mile race down the Texas Coast known as the Harvest Moon Regatta. We had over 200 boats competing this year. We entered Banjo Girl in the cruising spinnaker division and won our class. We corrected 3rd out of about 30 boats. The first and second place boat were both Pacific Seacraft 40s. The overall winner came in about 20 minutes ahead of us and the second place boat finished behind us. We corrected 3rd behind the two Pacific Seacrafts in the overall fleet ...not bad company to have for our old boats. For some odd reason they had Banjo Girl our Caravelle 42 rated as a faster boat than the Seacrafts by about 12 seconds per mile.

At any rate, we had a great sail. We started the race right with a frontal passage approaching so we had everything from a very close reach in some chop to zero winds (for about four hours) to a screaming reach in 20-30 knots with a nice following sea.

The fast boats left us behind in the light winds and short chop but we sailed smart and limited the distance as best we could. Around 2 a.m. the winds completely shut down so we just drifted along until a bit before 6:00 a.m. when the front came through. We only advanced around 3 nautical miles in the four hours of zero wind. Once the front came it came on quickly with an immediate blast of about 17-18 knots on the beam or slightly forward. The wind moved around a little bit but settled just on the beam or slightly abaft. (perfect caravelle conditions).

As the wind and seas built we made up most of the ground we lost early on. We kept the full main up and the 155% genoa for most of the morning. As the winds started increasing we roller reefed the genny down to about a 140% and the old girl was still standing tall in the 25 + knots of breeze. We were fighting the helm a little bit but the speeds while surfing were amazing and it was exhilarating to sail the boat at double digit speeds with a max of over 13 knots while surfing.

Once the winds came up to a steady 30 we starting getting tired fighting the helm so I opted to put a deep reef in the main. Obviously we were much more in control now not giving up too much speed and no longer rounding up. We probably lost a couple tenths of a knot in boat speed but we were not wearing ourselves out. (this was about an hour out of our last mark prior to the upwind finish)

We had a pretty good little class that we were racing against including my old Alberg 37 that I sold to my neighbor, some kind of Cheoy Lee, an older Cal, Hinckley Bermuda 40 yawl and a Hinckley 38. The Hinckley 38 was the fast boat in the class (modern type underbody drawn by Sparkman & Stephens similar to their early Swans. This was the only boat we were worried about because we knew the rest of the class was well behind us. Early afternoon we had the dark green Hinckley in our sights. We were pretty sure we won our class at this point but still pressed the old girl and she liked every minute of it! We sailed up to and then passed the Hinckley 38 as we approached the last rounding mark and the upwind finish into the Port Aransas harbor.

We already had a deep reef in the main but I was worried that once we turned upwind the genoa was going to be too much for the boat to handle. We got the inner forestay out and the staysail on deck and were ready to strike the genny and go up with the staysail. At this point I called for the rolling up of the genny and at that moment decided to leave a small amount of sail out and see if we could work her up wind with out doing the sail change. Beating into 30 knots with some good chop put the rail ...and stanchions in the water. I slowly feathered her up wind and got to the right side of the channel. Once we were protected by the jetties and in flat water I let the helm down and let Banjo Girl unwind and power up. We took off like being shot out of a cannon traveling 8 knots up wind. (probably had a favorable current). We finished ahead of everyone that rounded with us and put distance on them for the 1/2 mile going upwind to the finish.

This was a 150 mile race and even after basically being parked for 4 hours we still got it done in 25 hours. Not bad for a design that is approaching 50 years old!

 

[jon hansen]

thankyou very much for sharing. with aeolus in hibernation now it is nice to share a sail through story. congradulations on doing so well! Jon