K1 single-handed keelboat

Trapezing a keelboat is such an obvious possibility I'm amazed it's not common.

Why hike your knees off when you have such a nice stable platform to trapeze that even your granny could do it?

I see that the first production K1 has been produced and is at the Boat Show -

http://www.k1sailing.com/index.html

Yes, the Tempest, but you still have to be huge and strong to crew a Tempest competitively!

But in boats like the F15/K6 if you're using the lead during racing you aren't fast - they need to be sailed upright (I believe Ian Barker's F15 world champ crew was 6'6" and 18 stone to achieve this!). So they could be sailed more comfortably if crews could trapeze.

I appreciate that that isn't legal on a K6, but it's always puzzled me that more keelboats don't use trapezes.

Trapezing is basically more comfortable and less demanding than hiking, the only proviso being that a certain agility is required on lively dinghies to get in and out on gusty days, but a keelboat will give plenty of time and the consequences of a tea-bagging won't include a capsize. Wasn't it Paul Elvstrom who said that he couldn't understand why the Star (or was it F15?) didn't use a trapeze?

Originally posted by laser193713 why is he tacking backwards, and why sail in the river? Why not venture out to at least Cat Head or round to Sposa? Boat looks nice on the water though, how much weight is there on the keel? the rig doesnt look that big especially in the river where there is never a lot of wind and if you're already hiking in that wind then how does it fair in proper solid wind?

Yes, tacking backwards probably due to too many years Firefly sailing...

The keel weighs 60kg on the prototype and will probably be about 65kg for the production version.  The prototype mast is very stiff and with just over 11sqm sail area (8 main, 3 jib) the boat heels readily in a breeze, but as Medway Maniac notes its designed to be sailed heeled anyway.  The breeze was quite solid at times when the video was taken and at 73kg I'm at the lower end of the crew weight range.  Still confident though that with the rig sorted on the production hull, which is slightly wider too, stability will be about right with this sail plan.

Re launching and landing, the keel can be raised and lowered easily with the 6:1 block and tackle, even with the mainsail up provided the boom is not on the centreline.  At the Hamble I raised the keel before sailing up the slipway - its probably more stable like this than most single-handed dinghies with the board up.  Needs about 6 inches more depth  for the trolley than a typical dinghy and pulling it up the slipway was easy.  We'll try to get some video of this up on U-tube soon and venture out to some waves too.