Longtze Premier's crash test in Hong-Kong

by Leo Yang on 14 Nov 2007 A steady twenty knots, 25 knots in the gusts, a good sea, a few breaking waves and sailing in a big swell seven miles outside the Hong Kong bay: The Asian International Sportboat Championship, which started Sunday November 11th is a good test for the Prototypes #2 and #3, entered into the competition.

It is the first time that the prototypes have been tested in such strong conditions. As a result, some exciting sailing, some confirmations and some breakages. A true crash test!

'The boat proved to be extremely fast downwind and on a reach a veritable jet fighter. We had a hard time upwind the first day when the wind came up. The second day was already much better, especially with the new trim adjustments to the mast and the battens of the mainsail. But this validates the choice to make a new keel for the production boats, with more righting moment' commented Pierre Mas, helmsman of Proto #3.

'On the damage side, the rudder showed signs of weakness. Too fragile. It broke on the two boats.

'We have already noted the weaknesses in Shenzhen and have decided to reinforce them. In light of the last days, we passed to a new upper speed range: the production rudders will be completely in carbon; we want to give priority to being solid, keeping them lightweight and reliable. On the other hand, we didn’t find any thing to worry about when losing steerage and going into a luff….. the boat gently came back into control! We brought in the spinnaker, dropped the sails, and came back to port to make repairs without any problems.'

'There are some other points of the boat which will be modified, like the size of the spinnaker halyard which takes a lot of load at the halyard sheet stopper. We will go to a larger diameter halyard and proportional to the size of the spinnaker.'

The tests aren’t finished yet. 'We are going to pick up a new generation of rudders, completely in carbon on Friday and will be ready again to sail Saturday and Sunday. Afterwards, we will do a final analyis of our two months of sailing to finalize the specifications of Prototype #4 which will be built during the fray. After the final tests of the last Prototype, we will be ready for the construction of the series, planned for the beginnging of December. A constant production quality of a monotype series and, with the guarantee great realiability, are the price!'

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