As you guys know our boat is starting to be built. That's really exciting, but in order to finish the hull of boat we need to finish the sail plan of the boat. And that's why we are at Selden Masts today, because we have a really important meeting to finalize the design of our masting system. That's gonna be just so awesome. So, let's go. Well, if you're new to our channel you might not know that while Meta Boatyard builds the hull of our new boat we will be converting a cargo van into our home on wheels to live on it while we finish the building of our boat ourselves. I don't know if you remember but around 2 years ago we went to the US to visit our good friend Jonas at Selden Masts. That's Christmas tour at Selden Factory. We were so impressed by what we saw that ever since we knew that if one day we would build a new boat we would definitely need to work closely with Selden to design our new sail plan. And after years dreaming the day has come. Welcome to Selden France. So, before we start this tour we need to give you a quick explanation so you'll understand exactly what we looking for from this visit. What are you looking for? What's the answer we need? So, first... we need to decide if we're gonna go with aluminum or carbon fiber mast. Second, if we're gonna have a mast head or a fractional rig. The angles of the spreaders. If we're gonna have straight spreaders or if we're gonna have angled spreaders and if we have angle spreaders what will be the angle for spreaders because this will change the structure of the hull of the boat that we were just starting to build. Are we gonna have a furling main system or not? Are we gonna have a batten car or are we gonna have a simple sliding system or a little car that slides inside the mast? There's a few different ways you can put the main sail away and we need to make a decision because this actually change the weight of the boat. If we're gonna have single line reef. Yeah, that's another option. Furling genoa. Are we gonna have electric? If we have electrical we need to find a way of bringing the wires to the electrical panel. And also if we have just a normal furling system we need to have a way for the line to go to the cockpit, so we need to know the deck layout. Sail plan. The sail plan is really important because this will change the mast itself and also you change how the lines are gonna run in the boat... it will change a lot of things. Deck Hardware. The amount of lines on the cockpit, where to put the winches and how many winches we need. So, now that you know the rules of the game you can watch this video that's gonna be the tour of the Selden Factory and try to find hints of what the decisions we made and if you want you can even comment below before the end of the video because in the end of the video we're gonna tell you exactly what we decided on and why and all the explanations behind our decision. But now... let's go to the episode. We're finally at Selden France. We've been talking to Greg for a while and we say: Greg, we're gonna visit you at some point and the day has come. Thanks for letting us come. Thank you. This is Greg he's gonna take us around Selden France to show us the production of our future mast. Exactly. Because if we're gonna build a boat we are gonna have a Selden Mast. A few months ago I saw a post on Selden's Facebook page that got me really curious. They'd just bought a huge autoclave. And that means really soon Selden France will start producing their own carbon mast profiles. And that's so cool. So, this part has been built 2 years ago and this is clearly made for carbon mast production. Originally the UK Selden Factory was the only one with the necessary equipment to produce a carbon profile. But according to Greg due to the increase in the demand the Selden group decided to expand their carbon production and invest in a new autoclave. That means that soon Selden France will also start producing their own carbon fiber spars, so Greg was really proud to show us their new carbon fiber Workshop. In the last 10 years let's say... is the amount of carbon growing? Replacing aluminum or not really? Yes, it is. More for racing probably? Not only, also for cruising because you've got a lot of advantage by saving the weight on your boat. You can keep weight on the keel for instance so get a light boat, you get the boat more comfortable... lots of advantage. And more and more blue offshore cruising boats are now fitted with carbon mast sections. The market is clearly growing. It's lighter and stiffer. That's... oh I can tell. He just come carrying one. On the carbon mast you have to design everything from the beginning because... there you can see all the patches on the... all the reinforcement which are made on the mast. So, you need to know where each screw is gonna be? Exactly. You have to think about cutter stay fitting, you have to think about spinnaker halyard exit... everything from the beginning. So, that means it's harder to do modifications in the future. In 30 years if you want to modify you need to be careful with... If you want to add a clutch on an aluminum mast is not a problem you fit it, you screw it on the mast directly. You can't do that on a carbon mast because you have always to put a patch. I just found an excuse... we're gonna have an aluminum one. It's not because it's too expensive it's just because I cannot modify in the future. More flexibility yeah It's more flexible, yeah. Here we have a mast section for J boats, J70, so which are on preparation there. So, they are gonna glue the truck on it. So, the track is just glued? It's not screwed? No, it's only glued. That's interesting. And then it's gonna be varnished into the cabin, the painting cabin which is there. So, that whole thing is the painting cabin? It is. It would be nice to bring all our furniture here varnish all the veneering. I think we are gonna ask them to come paint things here. Wow. Now it's even better. And the fact is that here we are able to paint or to varnish a carbon mast but also aluminum section. We're able to paint on anodized mast. So, double protection? Yes, basically it's the double protection if you have anything... if you have a wrap or painting that gives a protection against corrosion. The original part I would say made for aluminum production and the main thing is that here you have a CNC machine, which is a huge Improvement for us because we've bought that 5 years ago helps to... speed it up probably also. Yes. For a a mast for... like the one of your boat it's made in an hour and a half. What? We can leave today with a mast. We put on the van, just take home the mast. Just... only the cut out but... And how many people work here? We are 35. If you don't know yet... Selden is a lot more than just a mast manufacturer, Selden is what they call One-Stop shop, for everything you need for a sailboat from the deck up. Anything from a mast, boom, poles, standing rig, running rig, furling systems tracks, blocks, winches and so on. How many reefs can you have in a single line boom? You can have two single line reefs and the third reefs is in that case with a standard reef. But it's possible to have the third? Yes, of course, of course. Okay, because our old boat we had single line reef, not a Selden one and now this week... It's not the same system. I know. I didn't know. This week I started studying like every little detail and I got the like the drawings and I'm like... Now I finally understand. I'm really curious to try that now actually. So there is a tack line coming back from... to the cockpit. This line comes there, goes into the sheave at the back of the bolt end, come back to the slider and then out side of the mast. And then when you take it, it pulls down out side of the mast and at the same time the tack line is coming there. The difference in between this system and our system (*the one we had on our previous boat) is that this line is independent from this line and that means it always come together. Our line was... it would start here, up, down, here, up, down and to the cockpit. When you have a lot of wind and you lose the halyard too much and you tie this... it ties here and doesn't tie here. And there is no way this can happen here because this line is always the same length. You can take a reef within one minute. It works really well. This is the part where the spreaders are made. The extrusion can be longer like this one, we cut it depending of the length that we need. You know... we drill the holes, we drill the place where we can fit a pad eye for lines or lazy jacks. And flags. All our spreaders are are taper to save weight and for the aesthetic also. And another thing that I love about your mast is how you have the finishing that's round, our old spreader was like sharp, it felt like they made that to cut the sail. Literally, it feels like they made that to cut the... it was like sharp. We've got several lengths for each size of spreaders, so this one is for instance 1300 mm spreader and this one 1700 mm. And what is a big angle and hat's a small angle? What do you consider a a really angled spreader? I would say that from 20° it's a correct angle. And what would be the highest angle? We can go up to 30. That's really angled. It's a big one. That's for racing probably. Sometimes more now for, you know, for new boats with no back stay, they've put more angle. They are going up to 35. 35. That's crazy. It's important. But for like a monohull? For a monohull. To maintain the mast and to avoid movements. And no back stay then? No back stay. That's probably a racing boat. Cruising boat. Cruising boat? Like which boat? The latest Oceanis 34, we have... The latest Oceanis has no back stay? No. Oh, that's great I've never seen... We've made a lot of Sun Odyssey 349 as well. The world is changing and I didn't know. That's crazy. So, this is why you need in that case a lot of spread angles to keep the mast on position and to to keep good forward stays tension. I'm also curious to see sample of the section of the mast you suggested for our boat. So, this is the mast section that we did propose to you. So, that's the 261? Yes. We also able to design, you know, mast in two parts with a joint like this. The assembly is made after that when the when they do receive the the mast... We had the same... our mast was divided the same way. If you ship like close in Europe you can do long mast? Yes, we do. We can go up to 20 meters with this kind of section in a long, you know... in a single extrusion. All the mast extrusions are designed to receive this type of sliders. The main advantage of this is to reduce this friction and to, you know... to use your main sail, your full batten main sail like batten cars. So it's a different kind of batten car? Exactly. The advantage of this compared to, you know, to ball bearing cars, batten cars is that so it's far easier in terms of maintenance, if you have anything on the main sail you don't have to remove the cars, you know, unscrew everything. It's very easy to replace of course but also to remove the main sail for just a short time if needed if you'll leave the boat. Also it's cheaper. If you fit it that on the on the mast like this... Compression or traction is working anyways. You save weight on the mast, you save time. You can regulate the tension of the batten on the car? We are able to to tension the batten from the front side of the mast or even to the off side of the batten receptacle as well. So that means you can control the tension on the batten on the the little plastic part? Yes, with the screw, yeah. Because ours was just like line... you just need to go to sail and like tied more the line. So, you can be much more precise with that than...? If you have like a screw that you can control the the tension. Of course, you can put more tension on it. Here is a mast coming from the CNC machine, arriving here to be assemble. I'm gonna show you on the mast there. We only use copper nickel mono rivets like this, so that avoids any corrosion in the future. We've got also some details there with the masted box. Mast box is in aluminum, so it's lighter. This is an example of the spreader bracket fitting on this. You've got some screw linking it together to maintain the bracket. It's connected, it's one piece. Exactly, it is connected together. What we call a dead end bracket allows to fit, you know, two point on... 2 by one, yeah. 2 by one spinnaker for... especially for a code zero system. When you get some more tension... What's the difference if I have like two back stays or one back stay? In that case the toggle is different. I would mainly recommend to get one back stay and then a block and divide it in 2... What's the reason for that? To be able to adjust the tension and to save weight also. Because instead of having the weight of two wires you only get the weight of only one wire from the top and then you can divide it into 2 to fit the tackle or a system to adjust tension. Because if you have a a fractional mast this is also one of the advantage is that you will be more able to add the tension and to work on the bend of the mast, you know, to adjust the the shape of your main sail. This is the system. So, finally the furler remains the same. The fact is that we take off the drum and we put the motor in place. So, feel free to push on the button if you want. Let's go sailing then. Life is much easier. This is a two-speed system. And if there is too much force it will stop, right? It won't break. It's not like something that you cannot control the strength it's gonna stop before breaking something? Of course. And this one is the furling main. But this is the mechanical one, right? Not the electrical? No, you've got the electric motor. It's with... Yes. That's just the bypass if you need to? Exactly. The main advantage of the motor that we propose is that we can fit that on current system. And all the system is working with motors in 42 volts. So, we've supply with that a power supply unit like this one to transform the current from 12 to 42 volts and and then you can feed all the equipments. It could be 24 also or just 12? Yes, of course, 24 as well. Are you planning to put 24 volts on the boat or? It's more complicated... The battery bank itself is gonna be 48 probably because of the hybrid proportion. So, the idea is to have hybrid diesel electric and then the battery bank is 48 but then we need to lower down for some things, like lights and instruments. So, we probably gonna go down to 24. We didn't film 100% the second part of the day but it's a really important day... A sailboat needs to rely on a good masting system and a good sail plan... everything together. And I think this meeting was really important because we've been talking for a long time but in person it's easier to see the materials, the equipments and... Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. Thank you. But that's not the last time. You're gonna see us more often. So now let's talk about our decisions. We came up with what we believe is gonna be the sail plan of our boat. Before I start just to make sure you understand... we didn't yet buy the rigging system, we still have time to change things but that's what we have for now and we still have like one or two weeks to decide before we actually cannot change anymore the hull of the boat, so we still have time. But we are running out of time. So, what our decisions are? It's gonna be aluminum or carbon fiber mast? As you could see on the video already we cannot afford to have a carbon fiber. And not just that... For the program of... you always need to remember that there is no such thing of as the right exactly plan and the wrong plan or the right boat or the wrong boat. There is the right boat for the right situation, so the program of the boat is really important. What do you want to do with the boat? We want to build a boat that is a go anywhere boat. We of course want to go to the Pacific, you know that. But we also want to go to the North or to the south at some point and that means we want a boat that can take us anywhere because we can change our minds and instead of going to the Pacific we can go to Antartica, I don't know... you never know. So, we want to build a boat that even if one day we sell the boat the new owner can go anywhere. And also as you can see by the video the carbon mast fiber you need to do the reinforcements before everything. So, as we are gonna live on the boat I'm pretty sure in the future there's always modification. I think it's gonna be a simpler solution to have aluminum. What else? Are we gonna have furling system inside the mast? To be honest if you ask me 2 years ago: do you want a furling main? I would say no way I would have a furling main two years ago. If you'd asked me a year ago I would say 100% furling main. And the reason for because we lived for 2 years on the boat and many many times we would sail for like 3 hours from one Island to another and we were just like lazy to, you know, open the lazy bag and and the lazy jack, is just annoying. And like... all this hassle around the main and it would be much easier and quicker to sail with the furling main... Much quicker to reef, a lot of things would be easier on the daily life. And for the last year we were like decided, that's it: we want to have a furling main. We have some friends that are 100% against, you might be watching, you know who you are. And we said: no, but we... we were like: no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. And to be honest we trust the Selden system, the latest furling main system, a lot of good boats use it, like Hallberg-Rassy has use and it's a really good system. But, again... if we want to have a boat to go anywhere... anything, no matter how good it is on a boat eventually breaks. And if if one day... I'm not saying it's gonna break... But if one day it breaks that means you need to fix something inside the mast and if you're offshore fixing something inside the mast it's a lot more complicated than fixing something outside the mast, that's my theory. And also we might be in an island somewhere and we need materials and we can find it, I don't know. So, if we don't don't have the furling main we have 3 options. We can have sliders, just like old school; we can have a batten car, that's a track system with little cars like we had on Odd; or we could have the mixture between both that Selden makes that is a slider with a car. I think that's the solution for us because first of all it's a lot cheaper, second of all because it's really easy to replace. So, you can have a few spares on the boat if you break a car on a ocean crossing it's really easy to take the main down and put it back in place. So, I think for us it makes sense. Another advantage of not having the furling system inside the mast is that the weight is lighter because we are not having anything inside the mast. The mast is gonna be lighter. Because if you furl the main inside the mast and you're not using the main that means all the weight of the main sail is on the entire mast, that means the mast weights a lot more and that makes a boat less stable because we have weight on the top and rocks more. So, I think for us, for what we want from the boat it's gonna make more sense at this point. So, the next important question is: Are we gonna have a mast head mast or a fractional rigging? What is this? So, mast head is when the forward stay goes all the way to the top of the mast and a fractional is when they stay is a little bit below the top of the mast and that means that the main sail goes higher than the genoa, the forward sail. Until two weeks ago for me it was an no-brainer, our old boat was a mast head, that means the stay goes all the way to the the top and that means we have a bigger genoa and I always said if we have a new boat we're gonna have another mast head mast. And the truth is... after a few emails with Selden I kind of changed my mind. So, let's try to explain the motivations now and what happens. What's the difference between both systems. If you have a mast head... So, you have two forces taking the mast down on the exactly same position and that means the bend of the mast is gonna be a lot more forward, instead of putting the mast on the right position that is with a little bit of a rake, that it means a little bit falling back. With the forward stay a little bit lower you have the force like this, one higher than the other and then you can pull the top of the mast a little bit back and you have a much better position of the mast, you can control the shape of the mast much better. And also a mast head mast has a lot more compression force on the mast and that means you need a bigger section of mast, that means a big dimension of mast. And also you need bigger forward stays. In this case for example you would go from 10 mm stays to 12 mm stays and and that also means that you need a bigger genoa furling system and everything starts to get bigger to have the same safety. I'm gonna go for the cheaper, lighter and the same safety. And also that I can control better, in this way I can literally control the shape of the mast much better and I think that means you can go up wind better and it's better sailing wise. And the next question is: so, how much fractional do you want? Do you want 2 m higher than the forward stay? Do you want 1 and a half meters, 1.3 meters? That's a big decision that we don't know yet. Selden right now is trying to decide, talking to more engineers inside the company and with our designer and trying to come up with the ideal height of the forward stay. And we're gonna know about that soon. What's the next question? The angle of the spreaders. Also that's a big discussion. We have a friend, that's probably watching that... that said: you definitely need straight spreaders because it's much more simple, it's easier to tune and if you break... everything is simple. And I do agree a simple mast is better than a complicated mast. And I have other friends that also say: no, you need to have an angle spreader because an angle spreader gives a lot more tension on the forward stay and it's much better for the rigging, you can go up wind much better. If we have straight spreaders we have a lot more longitudinal movement on the mast. If we have a angled spreader we have a more stable mast. If we have straight spreaders we might need a baby stay. If we have angled spreaders we don't need a baby stay. If we have angled spreaders if we lose the back stay there is a possibility we don't lose the mast because the angled spreader will probably hold the mast up. So, in the end of the day we decide to go with an angled spreader and the reason for that because we want to have a possibility of trimming the mast better. And we also want to have a mast that if we break the back stay there is a bigger possibility that the mast won't fall because if... depends on the angle of the spreader, even if you lose the back stay the mast can support itself. And in a straight spreader there's nothing holding the mast back if you lose the back stay. And also we can have a bigger genoa without overlapping the spreader and if we have straight it always get on the spreader and that's a little bit annoying. And now you're gonna say: yes, but downwind sailing the main is gonna get to the spreader. Yes, but we're gonna have two head sails so we can go down wind wing on wing, that for me is better and more fun than having the boom and the risk of jibing, So, I think it's a trade-off. And now the angle of this spreader that's a good question. We don't know exactly yet because the designer of the boat needs to talk with Selden to get to an agreement on where we can support they stay on the hull because the design of all the structure of the hull is ready. Even though we can decide... we can change it as a metal boat. There is like its limits and also we need to have enough space to walk to the bow. So now it's a matter of trying to combine the good angle with the good situation on the deck. What's next question? Are we gonna have single line reef? So, if we don't have furling main that means we need to have some kind of reefing system for the main. At first I didn't want to have a single line reef because we had on our old boat and to be honest the first reef was good, the second reef not so good. We always needed two people to reef the sails. It was a little bit complicated and I thought Selden system would be the same until I actually started studying all the manuals. That's the good thing about Selden... you can find so much information online. They have all the manuals and like even like... If you don't have a Selden mast you want to learn how to trim your mast you can go to Selden the mast website and you have all the information necessary for that. As we did on Odd. So, after studying and studying and now after being on the factory and seen by myself. I think their system is so much better than the old one we had. And the difference for that because it's not one continuous line, it's just... you have two different lines, it's... I don't know if you understood by the video but it will make sense in the future and we really really like the way it works. And I believe that's gonna be a really good solution because we can by ourselves, like me or Roberta can reef alone. And I think it's gonna be a lot less complicated because we can do it from the cockpit and I think it makes sense. So, at at this point we decided we're gonna go with two on-line reefs and the third reef is a normal reef but we can bring to the cockpit because you can have two on the boom but we want three reefs. So, now I think it's time to talk about a sail plan. That's a complicated. One since we splashed Odd, of course we keep looking at the boat and sailing and trying to understand what could we we do different. And the truth is... on Odd we had a solent rig that means we had two forward sails on the top of the mast. And we end up using the smaller one much much more often because the big one was too big for heavy winds and also too heavy for light winds, that means whenever we have not enough wind for the small one we want to use the big one, it was too heavy to fly, it would just like be just hanging down. And that means on this boat we want to fix that. On Odd we had like 145% genoa, I believe. On this one I we are thinking on 110, that we... It can be the main, like the sail that we use all the time. And then we have a smaller cutter rig, instead of the 100% genoa that we had on Odd. And the reason for that because we use most of the time on Odd the 100%. But when the wind was too strong... We used to reef a little bit the genoa on the furling system. So, on this boat I want to have an option of a smaller sail, that means a sail that goes to the second spreader instead of the top of the mast. And then I want to have a smaller genoa, that means 110% genoa that we can use all the time. And then you ask: but 110... that's not enough when you have light winds. That's another good point on having fractional mast... that means I have space to have a third furling system for a light wind sail. So, we are gonna have a bowsprit... on the tip of the bowsprit to the top of the mast we are gonna have probably two options of light wind sails, that means a code zero to go more up wind and then something else like a spinnaker or gennaker or whatever, I don't know exactly which one yet. But something that is more meant to go downwind. So, that means you have two options: downwind and upwind. And you have the space to have a furling system for that, that means... if we have a whole week that we know the winds are gonna be light we can just leave the sail up and then we have three sails on furling systems. Talking about furling systems... are we planning on having manual or electrical one for the genoa? I think we're gonna have electrical and now we gonna say: you want to build a simple boat and then you're gonna go electrical for the furling genoa? Yes, in my opinion it makes more sense to have electrical because when you have the electrical furling system for the genoa the force that the motor does goes straight to the foil, there is no... it's on the right direction. When you have a normal furling system with a line when you pull the line you basically are pulling 90° to the stay, not exactly 90 but something similar to that. You're creating a force against the stay, trying to... you're not gonna cut a stay, of course. But it's just the wrong position to apply a force on a stay in my opinion. And also because if you have ever had a sailboat before you know that a furling system works perfectly when the line is new. But with time the line starts getting stiff and the line is not 100% new and then every time you roll and unroll the genoa the line gets In and out in a different way and many many times it gets stuck and something happens and you cannot furl the the sail until you fix that and that's really really annoying to be honest. And dangerous. And dangerous because if you're in a bad situation and suddenly you cannot furl the genoa it's a problem. So, when you have the electrical one you have gears inside and that means if you have gears it always rolls and unrolls on exactly the same way. And for me that's safety. And then you ask: if something happened to the electricity? They have an option of putting something manual, so it's an endless line, so you can furl it manually. So, it's a simple... you just get like a little winch, you just connect and you... it's manual, 100% manual. So, I think... for safety reasons I think it makes sense. Even though a lot of people might be like: no, electrical never makes sense. Sorry, It's just my opinion. I might be wrong but we're gonna try it, that's the... I think that's the decision. We're gonna try and if we decide that: no, this doesn't work we can always replace it because the system from Selden... you can literally just change the drum and the furling system is exactly the same thing. So, you can change in the future if you need. I don't think we will need but that's the decision. Another thing that's cool is... now they have new electrical inches that we are planning on having at least one. And the amount of energy that consumes to use the winch is really low. It all runs on 42 volts, if I'm not wrong. And then they have like a conversion to 12 or 24. And it's really low consumption, so I I think it's gonna be enough and we have a huge roof to have solar, a lot of solar. So, it's gonna be fine. Anything else? With all this configuration we are planning we would need to have like seven lines each side of the cockpit, right? That's another big decision we need to make. You must be wondering: why do you need to make all these decisions if it's just the mast, it's just like on the top of the boat it's not part of the hull of the boat. It is and it's not because if you have furling main or if you have reefing system it changes the amount of lines that you bring to the cockpit. And on our boat the way the lines come to the cockpit is through a pipe that goes on the side of the deck inside of the pilot house. And that means we need to make a decision on how big this pipe is. Of course you could say: you just put the biggest one you have and that's fine. It's really complicated for the interior layout of the boat. So, we trying to make it as small as possible but big enough to hold all the lines we need. According to our math on this trip to Selden we need 7 on each side, that means eight, because needs to be even. So, it's like two layers of four four four four four and that would be fine. And for now I think that's all the decisions. The amount of winches we need for the cockpit? We are gonna use probably four winches two on each side. But also Greg that you just met... Greg is gonna visit us on the boatyard when we get to the deck... When we build the hull and we are building the deck Greg is gonna visit us on the boatyard and help us to... see person all the details and... make the decisions about the deck layout. And that's the good thing about a aluminum boat... is that we can modify things on the boatyard, there is no foam work and there is no... It's fine to change it and this is the first boat so that's the prototype, that means we will need to change things. And I think it's gonna be better to make the final decision on the deck layout when we are on the deck. Are we painting the aluminum mast? That's a big question, I have no idea. I don't think so. Maybe. If I say no and then we paint it... don't. Maybe we can paint just the Spinnaker pole. We'll see. I don't know... I'm not sure, we will see. For now I don't think so, I think it makes more sense to be aluminum, it's one less thing to worry about. I don't know, to scratch the paint or whatever, it's just... anodize aluminum. But maybe, I don't know, you never know... it's double protection if we paint it. It would look cool, it could be orange. No. I like it black actually. Maybe the tip of the mast orange. That would be nice. I think we got to the end. We made it. Sorry for this complicated explanation. You were literally live with us... this is like not far from when we record and that's literally us rumbling about our decisions and trying to make a decision about the boat. And the reason for that is because we want to build a great boat. And we just want to share with you the process and what is behind the scenes of building and designing a boat. I think that's it. We see you guys next week. Yes. See you guys next week.
