It was a few days ago, one day after two of the important Baltic Sea races had been concluded. For once, the Baltic 500, which is regarded the most important double-handed racing event here in the North for amateur sailors. And secondly, the Brassfahrt, a relatively new race, which attracts more and more single handed skippers and double handed crews for a fun 100 mile ride. One of those participants was Arno Boehnert on his First 36 SALICORNIA. I know Arno latest after his First 36 had been the showboat for the world premiere at Duesseldorf boat show (shockingly long) four years ago …
This 34 years old guy is a sailing professional, dancing on many boats (including Maxi size) from the Baltic to the Med. He is also affiliated with Judel/Vrolijk, especially their cool JV 43 performance boat. SALICORNIA however, the said First 36, however is a private boat, co-owned with his uncle. This yacht is used as an all-out racer by Arno to keep in shape, test stuff and stay ahead of the curve, as well as by the family of his uncle: In leisure cruising mode. Interesting, don´t you think? So I took the chance to meet him. Right on the day after he returned from his first ever single-handed race participation to check out his boat. We scheduled my visit to 10 a.m.. Sun was up and heating the pontoon, Arno, having slept only a few hours after the race, jumping back and forth on deck: Big washday and cleanup.
Why tuning an already high-performance boat anyway?
Because the extend of “tuning” apparent on that ship is massive. And massively interesting too! But let´s start at the beginning: Wasn´t the new First 36 advertised as being an all-out performer anyway? So why “tuning” the boat? Well, as with 100 per cent of all yachts built and delivered to their owners, SALICORNIA underwent some changes because the standards built in by the shipyards almost never really fit with the owner´s needs. They cannot. How could they? These are series production boat, hence the producers try to hit an average taste or demand. The last 5, 15 or even 20 per cent is done by the owners. That´s a normal thing. Those changes, or “tuning” in Arno´s respect, often happen in three major areas: Looks & beauty, practical (detail) solution and outright performance tuning.
As I arrived and contemplated the boat´s cockpit from the pontoon, I could already spot some differences. Arno greeted me, came to the stern as he was just unpacking some sail bags on the fore deck: “Everything is so wet!”, he said: “Gonna utilize the nice sunshine and bring all canvas out to have it dried …” I jumped aboard and so a very unusual interview started: I followed him around when he brought up yet another sail bag, and he pointed to the various spots, explaining what he changed and why. So, let´s start this crazy tuning walkthrough …
More grip!
First thing you notice as it is probably the most prominent detail visually on SALICORNIA is the deck. You may be familiar with my efforts to improve grip and comfort aboard my last boat, in the end, Seadek made the difference. I am pleased to see that Arno went for this awesome material and manufacturer as well. The cockpit of SALICORNIA is fitted with custom cut EVA-foam. Arno went for a plain grey with no visual details whatsoever, the only visual thing I notice were some markings in the EVA-deck from 1 to 4 for the mainsheet traveler car.
I went for EVA-deck in my new boat as well, but only down below deck. Though I absolutely love the haptics, the visuals and the durability of this material, it is far too “modern” to be fitted to my classic Omega 42, so for the deck I went for a more “standard” material, as you may check in this article. But back to Arno´s First 36: Changing the decking doesn´t stop for him in the cockpit. As this boat is heavily used for all-out racing, jumping back and forth on deck and at the mast for changing sails and hiking is daily business. In this, the crew needs to have safe grip even outside the cockpit.
So the usually only Gelcoat-“imprinted” non-skid areas of the sidewalks and the coachroof hade been covered with anti-skid paint. I know this kind of paint under its brand name “Kiwi Grip”. It really works and improves a sure-footed passage from the cockpit all the way to the bow. Again, Arno went for a classy grey here. What struck me was the fact that SALICOARNIA is covered with Kiwi Grip on every single free bare Gelcoat area you can think of: But that´s how you should do it if you want to make sure that every step aboard you boat is a safe step.
Chafing protection
Jumping back and forth, unpacking, unfolding and unrolling the wet sails to have them drying in the sun, I noticed a lot of black additions the the boat´s surface. Mostly around blocks, shackles or other fitting points. That´s mostly where harder metal fittings are either loose (and thus banging on the gelcoat when sailing) or turning around (and chafing). I have added many of those protective stickers to my old boat as well, but Arno went a step further here.
Chafing protection on a racing yacht is paramount: The boat is sailed very aggressively, meaning that care for the hardware or the boat itself is often neglected during maneuvers. The aim is to be as fast as possible: Sail changes, tacks and gybe, you name it – no regard for a heavy metal shackle falling down on deck or – as in this case – fittings, rope-eyes and even furlers making bold contact with their surrounding surface. In this, protection is paramount: I used to apply carbon-style adhesive stickers to GEKKO, Arno fits real Carbon-plates.
Carbon, by the way, is everywhere on SALICORNIA. Of course, weight matters most when you try to sail fast, but custom-made carbon plates as simple chafing protectors? Arno says that it makes sense to stay true to the concept: Saving weight by utilizing this material, even if it´s just a simple little 10 by 10 plate, is adding up. 10 grams here, 50 grams there … in the end, it´s another kilogram saved. And by the way, it will surely last much longer than my amazon stickers in carbon look …
“She stays on track like a Volvo!”: Toe angle trim
These were rather practical and optical changes, but here´s a really cool detail: As Arno was clearing the aft cockpit section for yet another wet sail to dry, he said: “Ah, wait, take a look …”, and he opened the aft locker. Down below where the rudder fittings are located, I could instantly notice that the standard steel bar for synchronizing the double rudders had been substituted with a nicely made carbon bar. But it goes further than that: Mounted on top of the rudder bearings, right there at the trunk, a surplus installation is visible, something special and rarely seen on “ordinary” yachts. A toe angle trimming device.
On the portside helm station a little a little black control box is mounted – just in a makeshift mode, as he admits, it is due for a proper fitting in the coming days. But apart from the preliminary attachment, the whole thing is working properly and just fine. The idea here is that by the push of button the angle in which the rudder blades are aligned in the water can be altered. It´s easy to show, says Arno and points down to his feet.
His toes are pointing outwards, which translates to “toe out” on the controls – rudders are “open”. Then he moves his toes inward, just like people with knock-knees would do: “That´s toe in, you see?”, he explains. Same goes with the angle of attack of the blades. And does this really do the trick?, I ask. He nods, a lot actually. Preferably on a downwind run at higher speeds: “You put them toes in and the boat becomes far more stable, will be sailing like a tank or a train on tracks.”
I haven´t seen such a trim device on any other boat until now except for Arno´s First 36 and the Dehler 30 OD. For this boat, the toe angle trim is done by hand, mechanically. Other than that, it´s more a fitting for all-out racing yachts, common on IMOCAs. It´s a relatively rarely utilized trimming device, when you google it, there´s almost nothing in terms of resources. Which is not surprising at all: I remember when I have had issues with a vibrating rudder blade on my First 27 SE – not because of the toe trim angle, but of the trailing edge of the blades – but I remember that we´ve discussed maybe changing toe trim as well.
Carbon. Everywhere.
The boat has Carbon. Everywhere. It seems as if Arno has tried to substitute anything that´s possible with the black lightweight fibers. Most apparent the steering wheels of course. I am a big fan of light wheels at the helm, you may know that I already had my own Carbonauticas custom painted back in the day when I was about to get a First 36 myself.
Arno is a step further: He went from having the normal composite steering wheels which have the carbon only within their brand´s name to real carbon wheels. It´s a beautiful work of craftsmanship and will shave off a few grams from his boat´s overall weight. Carbon – or in general, lighter – steering wheels have far less inertness to overcome, which is a big plus when you steer by hand and want to move them fast. Those heavy standard steel wheels quickly become a burden, when moved permanently. So it´s much more than just weight and looks here.
Same goes for the rigging: Arno went for the Axxon composites mast and boom. For racing yachts something like a must nowadays, the products made by the Romanian company are seen on many performance boats as well as ordinary cruising yachts. Getting the weight down from the mast and back into the boat will improve weight distribution, influence the stability curve and also add some interesting material properties to the boat´s long list of tuning details.
With the new First 36 SE just a few days officially launched by Beneteau, this setup is now also available ex works directly, with the mast being part of the specifications- and options-list and an Axxon boom to be delivered upon request. So, if the shipyard does make an effort here to have this option being part of their official offer, there should be something about it, I´d say. I don´t have the numbers, but I guess their main thing is a significant reduction of weight compared to the standard aluminium rigging. And maybe some superior, or at least different, trimming options of the carbon mast.
Defining detail: The bow sprit
Something the shipyard for sure is not offering is to be seen at SALICORNIA´s bow. I remember quite vividly when I saw this ridiculously elongated bow sprit for the first time during boat show Duesseldorf a few years ago: I didn´t know anything about Arno and the backstory of his yacht, and I thought that this would be the standard now … Well, it´s not.
Arno had the idea to increasing the boat´s light wind sailing capabilities right from the start. By elongating the bowsprit – of course at the same time carefully calculating the strength of a new bobstay, the attachment points and structural capacities of the bow-area of the hull – the Point-to-Point length increases, thus allowing to fit bigger sails in terms of Asy-Spis and Code 0-sails. He confirms that this was among the single most important and fruitful tuning aspects of his boat.
The new bow sprit is easily double the length of the standard fitting. It quite reshapes the whole overall appearance of the yacht. Though you´d still be able to identify this boat as being a First made by Seascape if all the stickers and the Beneteau logo would have been removed, the sharp, pointy nose of this fighter gives her quite an impressive appearance. By the way, those calculations and professional design emphasis have been done by no other than Vmax specialist Max Gurgel. There´s quite an interesting article on Max´s work for the new X-Yacht XR-41 – if you don´t want to miss any more articles, subscribe to my monthly newsletter here. Back to the article: That´s apparently lots and lots of efforts tuning SALICORNIA. And budget …
In for a penny, in for a pound …
Well, that´s the point, right? If you start at the bow at a certain level, you just cannot bail out midships because of budgets or anything else. You´ve got to pull it through all the way. Regarding the shrouds, of course, SALICORNIA comes up with a carbon standing rigging that looks absolutely sick and beautiful. But it doesn´t stop there.
The custom made terminals not only proudly bear the Beneteau-logo and the ship type, but these are marked where they belong. A simple yet clever little extra: I remember very vividly rigging my own last boat and being confused all the time when having to distinguish the different cables from each other, especially after winter storage, disentangling the mumble. Yet, that´s not the detail I wanted to point out.
The shroud bottle screws (as well as the bow sprit) are fitted with electronic load sensors. Something you would again only see in all-out racing yachts and very upper brands. For Arno, these are absolutely essential in racing as these allow to bring the boat to a real maximum, based on real data – not based on gut-feelings or some TWS-numbers. These load sensors display the current load, can be programmed to set off alarms when a certain threshold is reached and also have a safety margin before collapse loads are reached. Cool stuff!
High-Tech meets hands on
Which brings us to the digital side of the boat. Speaking of them load sensors, their data need to be processed and also displayed somewhere. Down below deck, Arno has a Panasonic Toughbook up and running. These extra rugged, waterproof and shock-resistant laptop computers are the standard equipment aboard professional racing yachts – perfect for a salty, wet and constantly (abrupt) moving environment like a raceboat.
On the computer, Arno not only runs the load sensors or have it connected to the boat´s NMEA 2000-network, being able to show the data of all connected sensors, GRP-related data and of course position and such. Here, professional weather routing software and VMG-programs are installed. Constantly being fed with the latest weather data and wind predictions, Arno is able to compute and plot the perfect – meaning the fastest – route at any point. For him, that´s the usual set of tools for a professional racing approach. For me, its absolutely fascinating.
It´s of course not everything carbon, high-tech and upper shelf. Standing amidst the chaotic scenery that is the saloon, Arno hauling up the heavy soaked sail bags on deck is a nice contradiction to all the digital sorcery. It´s still a lot of manual work and labor. As he is reaching for yet another big heavy looking sail bag, I acknowledge that even here down below every step has been taken to reduce weight of the boat.
The stove has been fully removed, instead a Jetboil fast-cooker with a simple nice gimbal has been fitted: This will be more than enough to heat up pre-cooked food underway or prepare a coffee for the night shift. Likewise and consequently, all doors except for the head have been removed as well, along with the folding saloon table. Arno says, if he wants, his uncle can quickly re-fit the parts for a long family cruise: “We have a 40 foot container on the premises of this marina, it´s full of stuff …”, Arno says.
Permanent attachment point for a flying cutter stay
There´s something interesting in the fore cabin as well. Of course, matrasses are stored outside of the boat as the cabin is utilized as a sails locker for racing. Arno sits down for a moment and points to the inner-part of a permanently fitted attachment point for a cutter stay.
To being able to fit smaller Jibs or a proper Storm-Jib if needed, Arno had a new attachment point calculated and a solution how to fit it designed. It´s a rugged, stable and much rigid solution right there. The inner part is fitted at the forward bulkhead very deep down below. It can be tuned for more or less tension with its own bottle-screw. Then it penetrated through the deck and ends in the fitting.
He also fitted a 2:1 halyard to not only get up the small headsails but to have them trimmed really tight with lots of pre-load, hence circumventing the often seen slack in flying cutter stays. That said, the standard mast top setup of the First 36´s mast could fit this surplus configuration, another reason to go for custom Axxon. Up on deck, the attachment point is almost not visible because of all the sail cloth cluttered all around. Which, of course, brings us to SALICORNIAs sails.
Talking sails
As you can clearly see in the pictures, Arno fancies the sails by Quantum. That´s my choice for sails too, my favorite brand. He of course went for the Fusion M-cloth which is the highest membrane sail quality you can get at Quantum. For the mainsail (of course full batten) he skipped a classic lazy bag, so I help him to fold up the main nicely as it was dry enough.
The Beneteau price list containing all the options for a First 36 offers just three sails: Jib and Main (either with hanks or furled) and a Gennaker (furled or classic). Any racing guy would reply that of course the sails for an all-out racing yacht must be custom made and cannot be ordered with the boat at the shipyard. That´s what Arno did too. As you can see on the pictures, the sails setup for SALICORNIA far exceeds the standard-offer though.
When sailing his boat, Arno can choose from a wide range of different standard sails and lightwind sails. The total amount of available sails for his First 36 sums up to a whopping of 14 (!) sails all in all. I mean, yeah, that´s really a range, right? It´s funny because as he is unrolling the canvas to dry in the sun, he tells me that in all of them four years he is sailing this boat, he never ever had to reef. I have to let that sink in.
But it makes sense from the standpoint of a racer: Instead of decreasing sail area by furling in headsails or gradually taking down the main, it makes more sense to change sails completely, becoming smaller and smaller with increasing wind speeds. But a furled sail, and that is valid especially for headsails, will always perform poorer than a nicely and perfectly shaped full sail with a smaller area. That said, it also means that there´s a lot to do aboard, especially here on the bow, to get down sails and attach new cloth. Therefore, some of Arno´s sail-clews are fitted with special hooks: Quicker attaching the sheets, no fumbling with bowline hitches in heavy seas anymore …
Last not least, of course, the complete set of standard ropes has been replaced aboard SALICORNIA. Arno shows a halyard that broke some weeks ago and another line with poor splicing. Instead, he went for top-shelf Gottifredi Maffioli ropes, taking is chance to define an individual color code for each line, making it easier to differentiate between each in the heat of an infight or maneuver. It goes without saying that this is also applied to all blocks …
“We might have the most severely beaten First 36 on the planet!”
We could go on for hours. SALICORNIA is a wonderfully filled basket of interesting details, be it the bigger ones or the more subtle ones. Like the makeshift sheet-holders: You might browse back to the shroud-picture. You see the gaffer-taped thingy sticking out? This is where Arno puts the Gennaker sheets when not in use, thus avoiding to have them dragged in the water or, God forbid, getting them loose and entangled with the keel, rudders or the screw. But time is up – and Arno still has some work to do.
Upon saying Goodbye to him and his fascinating boat, I ask myself how his extremely tuned First 36 would be holding up against the lately released First 36 SE? This boat comes with Axxon carbon rigging too, has a tiller and skips much of the heavy joinery inside. She is said to be 400 kilograms lighter than a standard First 36. A match race would be interesting … And you, you might ask yourself: “Is this all worth it? The First 36 is a fast planning cruiser and performing very well even as a standard boat, right?” Well, Arno´s boat is so wet because he just came back from winning the famous Baltic 500 in his class ORC 1. And just a few days later arriving first as single-handed participant of the Brassfahrt, even surpassing double-handed crews. Well. I guess that´s an answer, I´d say. I am sure, he would love to take on this challenge: “We may probably have the most severly beaten F36 on the planet”, Arno says and smiles – bring it on, bring it on!
If you like, check these related articles too:
“Massively excited!”: Talking to Andraz Mihelin about the (then) new First 36
POV First 36 – why this is a pretty perfect fast cruiser