I was in a bar, complaining about the slow pace of new boat availability from North American manufacturers one night when a shadowy figure came up to me and whispered, "Wanna buy a boat?"  A couple of hours later, I was sitting in Robbie Daniel's truck writing a check for the first Capricorn to be imported into the US.  I picked my colors and accessories and a few weeks later, the boxes arrived.

With the help of a couple of friends, the assembly went very quickly.

Soon, I was out racing against the other F18 designs.

Modifications I have made to the stock boat include the addition of a carbon Arriba tiller.

I removed the stock universal connector from the hiking stick that came with the boat.

Then I reamed out the end of the Arriba stick using a 1/2-inch drill bit; I finished with a fine file for smoothness and fit.

After inserting the universal fitting, the new Arriba stick was ready for action.

The Arriba tiller extensions are manufactured by Bob Edmunds in Arkansas.  Check out his web site at www.ArribaStick.com.

Oooops!

After bending a spinnaker pole and breaking my spare, I began pulling together a plan to fabricate two new poles using domestic supply rather than deal with the weak US dollar and high importation/transportation costs.  I found a local supplier for the extrusion, which (because we Yanks are lagging behind the metric world) is an ever-so-slightly different diameter than the stock Aussie material.  It was very reasonably priced at $3.75/foot.

I was fortunate to have my Brain Trust on site to help me figure out the position of the various attachments.

I used a tent stake to provide the horizontal reference in drilling each of the fairleads and turning blocks.

Once all the hardware was positioned and pre-drilled, the poles were ready for a trip to be anodized.  The break gave me the opportunity to spend a little time working out the separate internal tack line I had been considering for quite a while.  After talking at length with innovative riggers in the US like John Casey and Alex Shafer, I modified an idea from Stephen Medwell.

The Capricorn uses a mounting bracket to affix the pole to the front beam.

The inside of the beam is quite spacious and I saw the potential to run the tack line internally for part of the distance outboard, using the sleeved post to make the 90-degree turn.

There also seemed to be plenty of room along the back of the beam to use a hybrid arrangement from Shafer and Medwell, placing an exit block and Spinlock neatly out of sight.  Here's the "before" shot.

I drilled a 5/16-inch hole through the front beam for the internal tack line to enter the beam.

The tack line runs into the beam, turns on the finished striker post and exits through a Harken double exit block installed on the back of the beam.

After passing through the new Spinlock, the tack line is led through a Harken 16mm flip-flop and out onto the deck.  There are lots of ways to deal with the end of the tack line on the deck - I tended to just let it lay rather than try and have it taken up by a bungee to the back beam.

Here's me and Dennis on the 2009 "Angry Waitress" at the F18 North Americans in Long Beach, CA

Photo credit goes to Jeffrey Fortuna