Susan in Repose
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This is a favorite picture of mine.
Sue is sitting on the starboard bow of Surprise. The huge yellow asymmetrical spinnaker is shackled to the deck at the port bow then comes behind the blue forestay and leads back to the starboard rail by the cockpit. You raise the sail in a sock that you haul to the top of the mast. When you open the sail by lifting up the sock, the freed sail balloons out and instantly fills with wind. Best be prepared for the boat to GO!
The best point of sail for the “shoot” is with the wind off the beam at about 90 degrees. Laminar wind flow will hold or attach the wind to the leeward (outside} of the sail for a good distance back from the sail’s leading edge creating significant low pressure and providing lift which drives the boat forward. The sail of course is designed to mimic an airplane’s wing - lift carries the plane into the air.
In this picture we are happily offshore in open water. We need plenty of sea room when this sail is set. Neither the jib nor the mainsail are set. Both are furled.
We often sail this way. There is enough to handle with this one big sail should something go wrong. Plus it is significantly less work and frankly I just find that one big sail driving the boat elegant.
Surprise is a fast boat because she is light. Her designer, Chris White, is known for making his catamarans this way. Our boat’s weight at 48 feet is comparable to a 32 foot monohull.
She has no deep keel, no ballast. Surprise’s stability derives from her width. If she capsizes however she will not right herself as will other sailboats and you will have to live on her upside down diving to retrieve your canned groceries til you are rescued.
Surprise was built over two years by two brothers in Texas. She has only one sistership. She was laid-up as I laid-up two canoes. Three-quarter inch western red cedar in long narrow strips were edge-glued over temporary molds. Sanding followed then the hull was fiberglassed.
The hull was removed from her molds, flipped over, then glassed on the inside. The process was repeated for a second hull, then the two were joined by a foam core bridgedeck.
Surprise was designed to carry dagger boards and a 72 foot rotating mast, Both of these “go-fast” modifications were discarded. The rotating mast was unnecessary on a cruising boat and dagger boards moving up and down inside both hulls offered all kinds of problems. The
first owner also wisely had the mast cut down to 64 feet to be able to pass under East Coast bridges at 65, but he unwittingly put a 3 foot high antenna and a lightning rod at the masthead which I hit on my first bridge! The antenna was a whip -no problem- the lightning rod remained bent backwards at a 45 degree angle til the day we sold her..
What I loved about sailing Surprise was that every day was a race, even if the opposing skipper didn’t know it! Of course my endlessly patient and resigned wife would simply roll her eyes then the chase would be on. More than once we’d be cozying up to a bar at day’s end and my target captain who understandably arrived later would say, “Wow, So that was you in Surprise. I was able to read the name on your transom as you Smoked Us….
