Haven't been writing lately, we've been out on the boat the whole summer cruising the Baltic Sea and got a chance to participate in the ORC European in Gdansk, onboard Farr 52, Audi E-tron.
Past week was busy with changing the cruising sails to better canvas, some extra weight needed to be removed from the boat or at least relocated.
HTR2017 LYS 1 -Class
LYS Classes had a "straight course", 44.5nm. Start Area was close our home club, but part of the sailing instructions was that all boats need to participate in the parade from Helsinki Market Square to starting area. We left for the parade early and had good time to look for the winds before our start time. Pinged the line and then tried to stay out of the way of the starting boats.
LYS -Classes race was full chasing and we were one of the last boats to start. Committee end was heavily favored so that is were we started. Only one other boat started with us at 20:49:00 so starting right next to the boat was no problem. 30.1 in effect so we wanted to take it safe and stay high so did not push too much. Crossed the starting line about 3-4 secs late, which was pretty much what we planned for.
At start the winds were at around 8 knots but soon after the start wind died almost completely and also shifted to E which killed the boatspeed to under 1 knot. First we changed to Code as it seemed the right choice before windshift, however S2 would have been better. This was a short leg so I do not think it made too much difference.
Heading out to sea, wind picked up and our run with code gave us good speed straight towards the next mark. Seeing all the boats ahead of us getting closer is a nice feeling :) Around this time we changed some roles as planned before start, I steered the start and Rosa did the tactics, we swopped positions and Rosa took the helm, I took over navigation and tactics.
Soon after Helsinki Light winds picked up to 15-18 knots in the gusts and also veered back to SSE, so we changed to Jib. Michael and Niki did a good job at the bow, Arto at the mast and all went smoothly in complete darkness. Erik and Kaarlo found a good trim and that was confirmed by the good boat speed we had passing other boats in the darkness. Anna and Lauri acted as floaters wherever help was needed. Supercrew :)
Bay of Tallinn was upwind in light winds 6-8 knots, well enough to give us good speed and fast acceleration out of tacks, so we ended up tacking quite a lot for tactical reasons. At this point it was pretty clear that we were doing well, as the boats ahead us were other classes only (except for Speculator). Of course you never know for sure who has slipped past unnoticed in the darkness.
And the winner is.... a very well and consistently sailed Finngulf 41, but we are right behind it :)
Couple of "trophies" we were happy with during the race was that we
managed to keep our friends onboard XP38 Finx behind us. Also we once
passed the boat, Finngulf 41 Speculator, that ended up winning our
class.
