Is my stern fat?

It's not required by the Pacific Cup, but I decided that if I'm going to do this, I might as well go all the way and get a certified downwind rating. That involves weighing the boat. Besides, I was curious what the boat weighed.

The rating rules require that the boat be weighed "empty," and they mean empty. Everything comes off: sails, anchors, most running rigging, dishes, clothes, lifejackets, ... everything. As an out of town boat, we wondered, "Where are we going to put all this stuff?" So, we rented a U-Haul truck for the day.

First, everything had to go into a box. That took us a long day.

Preparing for the weigh-in. Everything had to go in a box.

After offloading a few hundred pounds of equipment, Velocity sat a lot higher in the water!

Then, all the boxes, as well as the sails, anchors, liferaft, etc., had to go into the truck

This is what it takes to race to Hawaii. The back of the 15' U-Haul truck.

Then it was time to go to the weigh-in site at the Berkeley Marine Center. Out of prudent seamanship, we left a few things on the boat for the trip over to Berkeley: 3 lifejackets, a toolbag, one anchor, and some water bottles. It was a beautiful day, with a nice breeze blowing in off the ocean, but without a single sail on board, we had to motor the whole 9 miles.

On our way to Berkeley, motoring. The boat looked forlorn without her sails.

When we got there, we were second in line, so we tied up to the fuel dock and offloaded the few remaining items then waited for our turn. 

First, the boat had to be inspected to make sure that everything was truly off, and we hadn't left a few gold bricks down in the bilge.

Then it was time for the weighing! We had to back down a long, skinny channel lined with expensive looking boats, then squeeze into the tight fitting ways that the Travelift used.

The load cell sits in its own frame, slung under the normal Travelift frame, so there was not a lot of room underneath it. It took some careful maneuvering to slip the radar pole under the frame and out of the way, but the crew manning the lift were skilled and took great care.

Velocity hanging in the slings. The load cell is the strap-like thing with a wire sticking out of it, a few feet above the boom.

A minute or two later, and boat was hanging in mid-air, supported at a single point, where the load cell was located. And, we had our answer:

18,340 pounds

That's nearly a 1,000 lbs less than any other J/42 I've heard of. I'm not quite sure why, but it may be because the boat is still pretty simple: no arch, no watermaker, no genset, etc.

As part of the process, the team also measured the waterline length and overhangs.

My thanks to the great volunteer team that handled the weighing. They were fast, efficient, and careful with the boat.

And, a special thanks to Bjorn and Jeff from the Velocity crew for taking the time off to fly down and help me with this chore!