BYYB Forums

I've been getting extremely frustrated the the summer weather here in southern alberta. the best wind I've been able to sail my mini-cup in so far since I bought the aluminium mast has been about 5-7 mph. Tomorrow is finally forcasting 25 mph winds and the local lake (4 miles by 8 miles) so if I can get out of work early enough were going to take it out and see if we can break any thing else before I tear off my deck to rebuild it.

Has anyone had a mini-cup out in this kind of wind or stronger? and if so what issues came up? did you break anything?

I'm not worried about flipping her :twisted: as I had already done that when a wooden dowel I was using as a hinge thru eye bolts on my tiller snapped she flipped so fast I couldn't even shift my weight to the other side. the mast and sail were completely submerged and she almost completely turtled on me

Luckily my family was out tubing so my brother ran into the van and got me a brass replacement that I had ready. (I have since started bringing a float bag with alot of spare parts) but as to getting her upright I just put steady pressure on the dagger board till the sail broke the surface, then I put all my weight on it and she flipped up to a fortyfive quickly and I couldn't put anymore pressure on the daggerboard as it went underwater :oops: . the second time I tried it I quickly grabbed the side of her when the daggerboard went under and got her up right lol.

It took only a few moments to get her back up toss all the floatables back in, (paddle, and parts) and replace the pin before I was on my way again.
What really shocked me though was that there wasn't enough water in the cockpit to bail out! hock: So now instead of bailing out the water I flip her, right her and sail away lol. It shouldn't be so bad once I get her new deck on though I'll be adding splash coamingsto the deck lol.

I've had my MiniCup out in some fairly heavy winds and it can be a lot of fun. 25mph would be a bit much for me though. Since I'm "larger than the average bear" - stability wasn't too much of a problem as long as the wind blew steadily. The gusts were the worst part.

I also made sure to not gybe, but rather went around the compass and tacked - what some people call a "chicken gybe"

Heh I'm also heavier than the average bear at 240 lbs and my brother will most likely be with me as well we've been dying to get out on the water with some good wind :twisted: and since I did filler her with form cut styrofoam we aren't too worried about leaks and whatnot.

I'll try to get some pictures I hope to be headed out about 2-3 this afternoon.

Well our luck seem to be normal at first. we got there and there wasn't a breath of wind the front that caused the wind all day and passed by about 3:30 which was half an hour before we got to the lake. but I didn't drive for a hour just to turn around so we figured we'd wait till it was pretty late before giving up.

I'll post what actually happened in the stories section. Needless to say we got what we thought was going to be a little rain, but turned out to be much much more.

on a building perspective I found some more weak points with my boat, and I'm glad I did before the big overhaul I had planned, so we'll be overbuilding her so we can do some serious heavy weather sailing :twisted: