On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 5:58 AM, fvonballuseck@gmail.com [harryproa] <harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au> wrote:

 

Any chance Bucketlist will still make it to the 2016 Transat/Ostar...

Somebody has to defend the honors of Cheers....

what would it take to make that happen?

Fedor

Good question.  

Money: Sail, safety gear, fit out, miscellaneous and shipping to Plymouth, about $Aus5,000 each.  

Time: A month each for a determined person to put it together,  debug and optimise it. 

Why haven't I pushed it since the original effort to build it?  Another interesting question:

1) Figuring out the build method was a big and very satisfying challenge, which has made all future harrys much cheaper, lighter and cleaner/easier to build. Finishing off Bucket list is just hard work,much of it in Adelaide, 2,000 kms away..  The time and money involved can be spent on more enjoyable projects.

2) There has been a fair bit of interest in the boat, but nowhere near as much at a fundamental level as I expected.  People are not as interested in racing a low cost, safe multihull as I thought they would be.

3) That Bucket List will be fast, easy to sail and all the other things in the video is obvious to me, so I don't need to prove them to myself.  And I have a more interesting challenge than proving them to anyone who can't see the obvious.  

4) That challenge is the offshore capable kite boat project.   Kite boats are the next step in light weight, performance and low cost after harrys, but there are some big problems to overcome (launching/retrieving kites offshore, handling the loads, control, heavy and light air, minimising the control inputs, night flying, safety, kite design and others), all of which are new territory, so interesting to me.  I have theoretical solutions for most of these, am testing them on Elementarry between now and Xmas.  

If (big if) it all comes together, I will use the long BL hull with 4m beams and perhaps a much smaller little hull and compete in the Brisbane Gladstone (308 miles of usually downwind sailing on the tropical Queensland coast) next Easter.  

I'd also like to compete in the R2AK in June, but this depends on finding a suitable crew.