[ilc-gre]

Hello, i am a proud crew member of an Farr designed and Cookson build, ilc-40 here in Greece.We have been trying since last winter to create an amateur racing team, we have reached a very acceptable level and now we are looking for small adjustments/conversions we can do to the rig, sail plan and rig tuning to gain in performance section. We have an orc International certificate and we are racing against tp52, grand soleil 42r, farr52, rodman 42, imx40, synergia40, corel 45 so competition is tough.In general we lack in downwind performance , in upwind the boat is simply a war machine. The boat has an original ilc 40 rig, 3 inline-spreader mast, jumper struts runners and checkstays, fractional symmetric spinnakers(115 m2) and displacement of 5.846 kg, 300kg of ballast is in the bilge, it carries overlapped genoas(140%). The conversions we've been thinking includes square top mainsail, masthead symmetric and fractional asymmetric for reaching and heavy weather.So, what about the mast? Is it able to hold the masthead spinnaker? I know about an ilc with masthead spinnaker of 160 m2 ( named Capricorno)but not sure if it has the standard rig or a carbon one. .About the square top, we will need running backstays, plus the runners, i know about an ilc in croatia, named Fly 4, which carries a square top with the standard ilc rig but i don't know how they manage the running backstays issue. is it possible to link them with the runners like the checkstays? Anyone who has been racing with a similar boat is welcome to give advise.Also we are not sure about the all round point rig tension, i think we are in 5000 lbs, but are we supposed to adjust it depending on the weather? Is there a tuning guide available? Also about the heavy air reaching legs would you prefer a A3 or a jib top and a S3? Any help will be truly appreciated.

P.S. The racing calendar of our team includes tough offshore races like the aegean rally, with heavy air reaching legs, light wind inshore races and windward-leeward races.

 

[paulk]

The fractional spinnaker is obviously hurting your downwind performance compared to some of your competition. An asym might help, but results will depend a lot on the sail (exactly how it is cut) and the conditions (point of sail, windspeed and wave height & direction.) We find that in 'round the buoys racing on our J/36 we can sometimes head dead downwind with our fractional spinnaker and beat (on handicap) the sleds who are tacking downwind with their asyms. We have also heard of other J/36's in Puget Sound using masthead spinnakers and taking a rating hit for it, but we are leery of what might happen if a puff came along that was stronger than the mast wanted to put up with.

 

[Stumble]

There are a number of boats that have gone to a Farr 40 rig, square top main, split backstays, mast head kites, and turbo poles.

Frankly for the cost of doing all this you would probably be better off just buying a used Farr 40. Or really there are a lot of really fast boats you could snag for the price of the ILC plus the type of conversions you are talking about (my guess is $100,000). But then you wouldn't have a $85,000 boat with $100,000 worth of upgrades.


If you are really serious about doing this I would immediatly call Farr designs for guidance. The old ILC class has disbanded and a lot of these boats have been heavily modified since, with Farr doing many of the redesign work as I understand it.

 

[ilc-gre]

There are a number of boats that have gone to a Farr 40 rig, square top main, split backstays, mast head kites, and turbo poles.

Frankly for the cost of doing all this you would probably be better off just buying a used Farr 40. Or really there are a lot of really fast boats you could snag for the price of the ILC plus the type of conversions you are talking about (my guess is $100,000). But then you wouldn't have a $85,000 boat with $100,000 worth of upgrades.

If you are really serious about doing this I would immediatly call Farr designs for guidance. The old ILC class has disbanded and a lot of these boats have been heavily modified since, with Farr doing many of the redesign work as I understand it.

As i said i am just a crew member, so selling the boat is not an option, furthemore we like the boat and the goal is not to win "everytime" the gs 42r and the rodman. Also either we have underestimate the cost or you have understand something wrong.Backstays(?? $), new main(~ 10.000$) new s2 masthead(5000$ top) or we estimate something wrong? EDIT Sorry, i just noticed you were talking about a farr 40 rig which includes modifications for chainplates which is really big cost.

 

[Stumble]

As I remember the ILC's they were made with massively tapered masts' so not only are square top mains an issue, they can't handle the loads from a mast head chute. And if you have one of the Farr designs... Well think of it this way, one of the best race boat designers in the world was paid a lot of money to make this boat as fast as possible. Finding speed he left on the table isn't going to be easy without changing the basic parameters of the boat.

A turbo pole may help, but it may not be worth the rating hit.
Do you still have ballast in the hull? This was an old IOR mess. Just removing it will help, adding it to the bottom of the keel would help more.

Otherwise the only things I can think of get really expensive really fast.

1) new mast for a favorite
2) new keel

3) either of those would likely be more expensive than a new boat.

 

[ilc-gre]

As I remember the ILC's they were made with massively tapered masts' so not only are square top mains an issue, they can't handle the loads from a mast head chute. And if you have one of the Farr designs... Well think of it this way, one of the best race boat designers in the world was paid a lot of money to make this boat as fast as possible. Finding speed he left on the table isn't going to be easy without changing the basic parameters of the boat.

A turbo pole may help, but it may not be worth the rating hit.
Do you still have ballast in the hull? This was an old IOR mess. Just removing it will help, adding it to the bottom of the keel would help more.

Otherwise the only things I can think of get really expensive really fast.

1) new mast for a favorite
2) new keel

3) either of those would likely be more expensive than a new boat.

As you remember the top mast section is really tapered. About the weight in the hull we are afraid of ims stability penalty this is why we don't move it.Removing it completely will come up with the result of a very light boat, so we are concerned about its heavy weather performance.Thanks a lot for the advice.

 

[Stumble]

The weight in the hull does almost nothing. It was just an attempt to play with rating rules not make the boat go faster. As I remember the rule penalized weight deep on the keel, so they put most of the ballast in the keel and internal weights just below the CB. Which allows it to count as ballast, but does almost nothing in providing righting moment. This is one of those quick questions I would call Farr about, but I don't think it does much if anything for the boat, except make the boat slower according to old handicapping rules.