ROUND THE ISLAND

A late night charity auction, a terrible weather forecast and the European time change made getting up at 7 am a struggle this morning. Still my boat partner Paul and his wife Grace were ready to go, and the weather seemed to brighten as we drove from Surrey down to Lymington. Paul had been looking closely at the weather forecasts and channel buoy readings and so a 2.6 metre wave height at the mid Channel buoy didn't sound good for our planned Round the Island mission.

Down in Lymington after a bit of preparation, adding a gallon of two stroke oil and some boat shifting by the yard, we were launched and pottering down the river.


We started gently and headed West but we could see that the Needles Channel had a lot of breaking water despite the neap tides. Big overfalls on the Shingles bank and by the Needles on the opposite side of the channel weren't encouraging. We progressed slowly. Once round the Needles the sea became more regular and we were able to increase our pace to 43 mph as we ran in a quartering sea down to St Catherines Point. Black Gold coped beautifully with these conditions and for the two of us using the Ullman suspension seats the ride was very easy. The third person standing behind but holding these seats found it rather disconcerting as they moved up and down.

St Catherines provided more irregular waves and breaking water. In fact it looked much worse that it was and despite one crew member letting out a scream we were soon through the race into the calmer water on the other side without even a drop on board. The remainder of the run round to my mooring in East Cowes Marina for lunch was very easy with the engine now sounding very good.

After lunch it was back to work, and on Graham Jelley's (Scorpion MD) advice, we did 6 runs, 3 each way in Southampton Water on the measured mile in order to assess our current propeller as the engine loosens up. We did these runs with a half tank of fuel and three on board with a constant leg angle of 7 degrees. We will use this data to decide on our next propeller.

We went back to Lymington in a typical Solent chop with the boat running very smoothly. In all a good day with no problems and us progressively gaining more confidence in Black Gold.

Gavin. 30.3.08

LAUNCH DAY AT LAST

After what seemed like a long wait, Black Gold was launched yesterday in Lymington. Launching a Rib is a bit of an overstatement, particularly as Scorpion had spent previous days doing propeller tests.

After four different props, we ended up with a 19-inch Revolution 4 bladed propeller which is very popular for Scorpions. By the time we "launched" the engine had done 6.5 hours running - 2.5 hours in the race engine factory. This means that we are virtually through the official running in process where the engine automatically gives itself a double oil dose. It still probably needs 20 hours in order to get to its full potential.

Scorpion had the boat ready to go and after a talk through the basic systems, we went on a trip out into the Solent with Ben from Scorpion - Ben manages the fit out and has also benefited from a week at Mercury's US facility. No problems at all, but given the Solent was "boiling" and the rain was heavy it wasn't a great time to do a serious evaluation of the boat.

What we did learn is that our glass screen dashboard will take a little learning and the Mercury "System View" with its 200-page manual looks very clear but we were struggling to find the page with the relevant information - like engine revs for example! We now know how to do this and have discovered that it can provide us with many things that we didn't know we needed, including an engine running history showing time at different rev levels!

One thing that struck Paul and me was how much this boat is an improvement on our previous Scorpion. Of course the boat in the water is very similar, albeit a metre longer. But every locker, every fitting seemed better - a great example of continuous improvement of what was already a first class Rib.

After the official hand-over, we took the boat down the Solent to Cowes, using the lee of the island to provide shelter from the gusts which we couldn't measure but which were forecast as up to Force 9.

A few things came to light: the trim tab controls are the other way round which makes them counter intuitive for me. The sexy "Zero Effort" engine controls feel good but the throttle control couldn't be left because it cuts back when you hit a wave. Maybe you need to keep your hand on the throttle! You also need to be careful that you don't change gear with the throttle open which of course you can't do with a single lever control.

Yet the boat didn't give us one anxious moment in quite extreme Solent conditions and the Ullman seats - which I'd selected without trying - appeared to be very good. You don't need to brace yourself for the hard landings. We have now drawn the position of our feet and will fit footstraps to ensure that we don't fall off sideways as well and always have a firm footing.

A lot to think about and a lot of manuals to read. We went home happy after Day One and look forward to tomorrow's run when we will put some more hours on the engine.

Links:
Scorpion
Mercury Racing
Round Britain Powerboat Race
Rib Racers
Gavin 29.3.08

Delivery delayed

We don't have a critical deadline to meet, but a new boat is always exciting and I was starting to prepare for what we'd do running it in over the Easter weekend.  Anyway, its important given issues like the propeller choice and critical engine height that Graham Jelley (the owner of Scorpion) gets some time in it. We plan to keep it in Lymington for a couple of weeks after launch to do any snagging and try out propeller options.  Launch date is now March 28th.

PROPELLERS

My knowledge is close to zero on propeller choice, but I have been surprised in this process how people attribute many aspects of the boat's handling to the prop design (trim, stability, chine riding, going up wind, going down wind, cornering, acceleration) even before you consider speed and revs.  As we will be running with the propellor close to the surface and higher, much of the time we will go to a four bladed prop which I assume provides more grip as its going to spend a lot of time operating on the surface. We have a 3 bladed Laser 11 on our current 7.5 metre Scorpion with a 21 inch pitch and this time I think its likely to be from the Bravo range. As for pitch, I guess it will be somewhere between 21 inch and 23 inch although we have a different gear ratio on this boat at 1.62.1 compared with 1.75.1 and a Sport Master gearbox.