What's happening with my VISS

It's a pleasure to work with a beautifully engineered boat with a unique design. The deck layout is clean and well through through. The boat was easy to put together and when fully rigged looks good with whatever rig. The extremely helpful rigging guide provided details on mast rake, foot depth, leach twist, sheet angles, everything you could want for a setup that delivers speed. I am reminded of my Britpop where Brad Gibson offered the same level of detail. If ever the boat started losing perfromance, all I had to do was go back to the designer numbers. The Britpop is still one of the best IOM designs and a top 10 finisher at the Europeans, but I digress.

Like the Britpop I stick with the numbers on the rigging card and to make life simple I write the relevant numbers on the sails and stickers on the hull give the sheeting angles. The only addition is I put the mast rake numbers on the hatch cover.

Starting at the bow, the jib tie down is held on the deck with a magnet. These used to cause issues with abrasion of the cord as well as rusting of the magnet, but the addition of a plastic cover eliminated the abrasion and the rust.

The sheeting comes out of the deck at the jib sheet and mainsheet locations and the sheets move freely in the lightest of breezes. The mast ram is attached to the mast which makes for speedier rig changes as there is no need to adjust the ram. The kicker is very easy to adjust and holds the boom firmly with no flex. Internally the sheeting system is nicely designed and easily adjusted with a spiral winch for rapid gybes. On the mast, the spreaders are carbon and aerodynamic and the carbon tape wraps for the adjustable hounds are so neat with tiny grub screw to secure them in place. I described the use of these in a previous blog.

The boat is a delight to sail being well balanced. The look took some getting used to but the more I sail it the more I like it. Performance wise it is great in any condition although one has to sail the boat carefully downwind in the top end A rig and B rig especially conditions are gusty. I am so pleased I made the decision to go down the VISS route and look forward to it contributing to improving my performance racing next year.