| Sojana - Farr 35m |
| Wednesday, 30 May 2007 |
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Future Fibres Project Case Study
0001/A
Issue: May 2007
Yacht profile:
‘Sojana’ – 35 metre performance cruising ketch
Designer: Bruce Farr
Builder: Green Marine/ GBR Challenge Yard, Cowes, UK.
Mastmaker: Hall Spars
Launched: September 2003
Owner profile:
Peter Harrison has owned two other Bruce Farr designed racing yachts; the Farr 50 Chernikeef I that competed in the 1999 Admiral’s Cup for the Commonwealth Team, and his highly successful Farr 52 Chernikeef II that has won many trophies including the Britannia Cup at Cowes Week, and also sailed for England in the 2006 Commodores’ Cup. Peter Harrison was principal of the GBR Challenge America’s Cup campaign in 2002/3 and is chairman of the Peter Harrison Foundation, a charitable organisation.
Summary of Work
Replacement of Nitronic 50 rod with complete sets of Future Fibres PBO standing rigging, with modifications to the spreader ends to accommodate the new shrouds. Nitronic 50 rod rigging is terminated in a round tip cup, so the spreader end has to be changed from a round hole to a rectangular box with a single fore and aft assembly pin. Otherwise all the mast fittings remained the same.
Weight Saving:
Existing standing rigging - Nitronic 50 rod – weight 1141kg
New standing rigging – Future Fibres PBO - weight 326kg
Weight saving: 71.5 %
Weight saving out of the total rig weight: 18%
Performance Gains – VPP Assessment:
Downwind in the order of 0.5 seconds per mile
Upwind and tight reaching these range from 4 second per mile in light winds (6 knots true) up to 10 seconds per mile in 25 knots. On a percentage basis this is 0.1-0.2%, 1% and 3% respectively.
Increase in righting moment: 6%
Farr Design calculations indicate that approximately 3 seconds per mile of the performance difference for upwind sailing can be attributed to the reduction in inertia.
Other alterations to yacht:
None
Reasons for choosing Future Fibres:
This yacht is positioned at the competitive top end of the charter market so demonstrating to customers that she is maintained at the leading edge of technology and fully optimised for future racing campaigns was a major factor in choosing to upgrade the rigging after only three years since launching.
Project Timeline:
Having obtained MCA coding for the yacht in late 2005, during 2006 Peter Harrison decided to upgrade to composites and Bruce Farr was consulted, at which point the VPP calculations were run to establish the performance gains. The Future Fibres PBO re-fit was completed in March 2007 at Antigua under the direction of rigger Tim Haynes and skipper Marc Fitzgerald with a rigs out to rigs re-stepped timing of less than two weeks. During this period, the masts were stripped and serviced, all the spreader ends were re-laminated changing the existing circular ends to pre-made Hall Spars rectangular boxes, re-painted, and the masts re-assembled with the new rigging.
Sailing Programme:
Sojana’s maiden voyage was to the Caribbean in January ’04 with a passage time from the Canaries to Barbados of 9 days 10 hours. She successfully completed the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge Race in 2005 that included 18 hours of heavy weather and logged a maximum speed of 34.7 knots. With impressive performances in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, Sojana has already stamped her mark on the international regatta circuit.
After the rig refit in Sojana competed in the St. Maarten Regatta and then the St. Barth’s Bucket regatta at the end of March rounded off her 2007 Caribbean season. From here she crossed the Atlantic to Valencia in time to be on show during the Louis Vuitton Cup.
Subsequent Race Successes:
Heineken Regatta – 1st in Class
St. Barths Bucket – 1st in ‘Gazelles’ Class
Owner and Crew Feedback:
“The boat is noticeably quicker- we won our class in the Heineken Regatta only two weeks after getting the rigs back in the boat. We have more pace upwind and the most noticeable performance improvement is in a chop, where the boat hardly seems to lose any speed at all – we are really pleased.”
Marc Fitzgerald, captain of Sojana. (Source: Boat International)
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