Picture above are Geary Davis and Joe Brasfield during a club race in early March. It was great to finally get these two good sailing friends together on CaiLeigh Anna.

A lot of water has flowed under the keel since my last update in the fall of 2014. Shame on me! Mechanically speaking, CaiLeigh Anna is in pretty good condition, but there was a nagging issue of raw water cooling that had plagued us periodically since we installed the new engine. I finally determined the cause to be a worn face plate on the Oberdorfer Raw Water Pump.

The pump uses sea water to cool the internal engine coolant through a device called a Heat Exchanger. Sea water is then pumped through a Water Muffler after being mixed with engine exhaust and is eventually discharged through an opening in the stern. When you don't have water coming out this means your engine will eventually overheat. I replaced the Oberdorfer Raw Water Pump and plan to rebuild the old one and use as a backup or spare. It sounds pretty simple, but diagnosing the problem has been difficult because of the periodic nature of the issue.

We ended last fall's race season with disappointing results, but with a plan for improvement. Primarily, we need more boat speed to live up to the Catalina 34's PHRF rating. We knew that our head sail was too small and this was remedied by modifying a 135% genoa from a Catalina 355 to fit CaiLeigh Anna as a 150% genoa.

During the first spring race on March 08 we finally had a chance to test the new sail in fairly light air without definite results. After a decent start we chose the wrong side of the race course and fell victim to a strong opposing current. We finished third out of four boats, but failed to cover the handicap so our finish was a 4th place. In addition to our tactics being faulty we also realized that our execution left room for improvement.

The spring race series was a total of five races, but we would only compete in three of them because of scheduling conflicts. We competed in the second and fourth races with similar results of last place finishes. Even though our tactics and execution had improved it was pretty obvious that there was still a problem with CaiLeigh Anna achieving a competitive hull speed.

We put this theory to test on May 30 during the 26 mile Coastal Cup Challenge Race from Fernandina to St. Simon's Island. Other than the start, tactics have little to do with this open ocean race. It pretty much boils down to sail trim and boat speed. We finished fourth out of five boats in our class and based on speed calculations we averaged 3.25 (nautical) miles per hour compared to winning boat's 3.7 miles per hour. We are clearly giving up at least ½ mph of speed.

We have cut the speed deficit by 50% from the last offshore race where we were over 1 mile per hour slower than the winning boat. The increased size of the genoa jib accounts for this gain in speed. We are fairly certain that our remaining speed issue is below the water line meaning that something is dragging or slowing us down. It's past time to have CaiLeigh Anna pulled for new bottom paint so later this month I will have her pulled at Two-Way Boatyard in Darien so I can inspect the bottom and have the anti-fouling paint restored for the first time since I purchased the boat.

I will also inspect and service the Autoprop H5 folding propeller which I suspect isn't functioning properly when the boat is under sail power. The principal of a folding propeller is that the blades pivot to a neutral position when sailing and thus reducing drag by 85% compared to a fixed blade propeller.

Essentially we are chipping away at the speed issues so we hope to be more competitive in the upcoming fall race series. Considering that a year ago CaiLeigh Anna had a dead engine and hadn't been sailed in years I guess I should be pleased with the progress that's been made. We've had a great cruise to St. Augustine which I'll cover in another post, and we have competed in two offshore races and well as seven club races. We are slowing chasing away the mechanical, electrical, and sailing gremlins that stand in our way of competing. This fall should be exciting!