Yachting World — February 2018

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Interview by Sue Pelling

Pete Cumming was part of the crew that set numerous

records on the MOD70 Phaedo3, including course

records for the Fastnet and Caribbean 600. He is also a

three-times winner of the Extreme Sailing Series.

above that angle, slightly tighter, your escape is

up. And you get one chance at escaping!

So with your trimmers you all have to

be focused. You become obsessed by the

numbers: boat speed; wind angle; windspeed.

And you’re always critical: are we in the right

wind range for the sail configuration we have

up? Because multihulls don’t have much

volume of boat in front of you, when you start

having too much sail up your centre of effort

is too high, which just means you drive the

bows down – and if you bury the bow at 30-plus

knots the boat will flip.

Everyone one needs to be versed on quickly

putting reefs in because generally when you’re

doing a record you’re in a big weather system.

The other trim control we use a lot is the

foils. The daggerboard is almost as effective

at depowering the boat as letting the jib out.

As soon as you start getting overpowered and

start uncomfortably flying the middle hull you

start lifting up the daggerboard just to keep

the hull kissing it. It gives you a little bit more

leeway and it reduces the drive, the force

forward that the boat produces.

If you get a big gust and you’re trying to

depower, the trimmers want to do a three-

quarter ease. So you leave yourself an extra 25

per cent that if it is going badly you can then

cut. You don’t want to let the sails all go and

flog because, for the driver, if he’s trying to bear

away, the traveller’s at the end of the track, the

jib’s gone, he’s got no sail control and you’re

basically in an unguided missile.

In this situation it looks like the jib’s gone, but

you can see that the mainsail leech is pretty

tight. Often the helmsman has got the hydro

release because the mainsheet is on a big

hydraulic, so we have a hydraulic stirrup that

your foot goes in, on a safety valve. So if you

put your brake on with your right foot, that will

just blow the hydro and give a big release.

The other danger with these boats is that you

can see the guy on the high side in the picture

hanging on, he’s the traveller guy. And the only

rope that you’ve got to stop you falling 40ft,

crashing into the boom or whatever else you’re

going to hit on the way through, is your traveller

rope, the one you’ve got in your hand. So you’ll

instinctively preserve yourself rather than just

letting the rope go. On a multihull it sits pretty

heavily on you when you’re driving that, if I get

this wrong, it’s all over. The record attempt’s

over. The boat’s probably lost and, worst of all,

I could really hurt someone.

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