What is heaven on earth? Well, if you ask a dinghy sailor (especially a 505 sailor), he or she would probably agree with me that Howard Hamlin’s garage comes pretty close. He has every imaginable gadget that could be used on a 505 or when sailing a 505 cramped in just a normal garage and the whole building clearly produces that nice candy store feeling.
I had the opportunity to visit Howard in late April as he lives there and I was there sailing the Congressonal Cup matchracing event. I have actually visited him on a similar occation two years ago buying some practice sails for my old 505. I was equally impressed then but knew there are always new things and ideas to pick up. Since I was and am in the process of fitting my new 505 out, it would be a to good of an opportunity to pass checking his 505s out and tap his brain on different boat systems.
Yes, he actually has two 505s! Of course it makes sense having one boat for practice and one for racing. Everyone should have it this way! Actually, I understood he used his Waterat for practice and a Rondar for racing. There were quite similar but not identical, which makes sense having the possibility of continuisly develop and test new ideas before committing to them.
The thing on the boat(-s) that struck me most were how many of the controls that were singleended, sitting on the centerboard case top. Howard actually did not have one single double-ended controls with one on each side of the boat. It certainly seems like he emphasize having not to many controls stopping him from moving around in the boat but still have most of the possible controls available.
He was having a mainsheet with an aft braidle system, something that I plan to implement as well. One big advantage is that there are no lines between the centerboard case and the side tanks. It enables the helm to move forward without having to lift his/her legs over the traveller or forward braidle. The disadvantage would be that one have to rig some new controls on the braidle splice parts in order to lift the boom up to or above the centerline of the boat.
A positive side effect of having an aft braidle is also that the bending load decreases on the boom resulting in either a lighter boom or a higher safety factor. He probably has gone in circles on most things on the boat and seems to have returned to a more simple layout.
One good compromise he has implemented (and that I am planning to do as well) was to use a simple pinstop track for the shrouds. You get rid of a lot of control lines and still get the opportunity to control the overall mast bend. Even though you can not control it underway, he assured that he has not noticed a great difference and has not really missed the possibility to adjust it during sailing. In consistent strong or light breeze this still gives you the possibility to have a static position forward or back of the normal position. Also, since the pinstop fix the shroud position, one can still use a normal adjustable shroud with the control line going in and down to the centerboard trunk.
The shroud tracks also makes rigging and unrigging a lot easer. That is actually something that seems important to Howard. He does not like to have the boat in the strong Californian sun and probably likes to have the boat at easy reach anyway. Therefore he always takes it home on its trailer. To make that easier, he has loops at the ends imporant lines from the mast where he tie a pilot line to pull the mast out without having to re-run all lines when stepping the mast next time around.