Fantome on a Close Reach

Originally named Opeechee II, Fantome R18 was designed by Burgess Swasey & Paine and built by Anker & Jensen in Christiania Norway in 1923/24 . She was built for W.C. Morrison who sailed her for a season or two on Long Island Sound and Massachussetts Bay. Built of single planked one inch Honduras Mahogony with oak frames on eight inch centres, she is a lead mine with a displacement of 11,000 lbs - 8300 of them being ballast. She still proudly sports a beautiful 50 foot 1 inch Sitka Spruce pear shaped hollow mast with an internal main halyard built by Red Nimphius (said to have been the finest spar craftsman of the central USA) in 1967 . A light weather boat, she was sailed for many years out of the Chicago Yacht Club and raced in the 1927 Mackinac Cup, placing second of 10 boats. The R boats, or 20 raters as they were widely called, were built as a development class under the Universal Rule. The letter boats are directly related to the grand J Class which sailed for the Americas Cup. Unfortunately the algebraic equation of the Universal Rule allowed for the design of increasingly "freakish" boats with ever longer hull lengths and compensatingly shorter waterlines. Fantome is a fine example of this. Her length over all is 40 feet but her waterline is just 26 feet. Her beam is just under 7 feet and her freeboard a mere 18 inches. Just like a big dinghy, there's no room for an engine. She is a well loved part of the Piersig family who actively race her and keep her in shipshape at the National Yacht Club in Toronto Canada. Her owners Hans-Henrich and Vicki Piersig hope to be as well taken care of in their dotage.

On board for the sail this fine evening were Vicki Piersig, Dory Barone, Brian McKay, and at the helm Henry Piersig. And myself of course.

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USA-Canada / Canada-Ontario

Lat: 43° 36' 24.12" N
Long: 80° 25' 46.8" W

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Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

A Canon EOS 5D with a Canon 16-35mm L series lens set at the 16mm setting was used on a Manfrotto 303SPH head. The center post of the tripod was clamped to the cockpit combing as there was not room to secure a tripod. The cubic panorama was stitched together with RealViz Stitcher V4. This panorama was shot with available light at 1/800 of a second @ f 11 2/3 in Raw mode with an ISO of 800 on the Canon EOS 5D. I made a series of 16 scenes or photographs. I processed all the images in the RAW conversion software Capture One Pro V3.7 from Phase. This software allows me to set the white point balance, drop the contrast, adjust the colour saturation, and fine tune the exposures before I create pixels. This process allows for a better workflow and cleaner files then correcting in PhotoShop. The images are then stitched together in RealViz Stitcher and the QuickTime panoramas are then converted from the flat tiff images