Jobs contn'd

Prop Painted for Mediterranean in 04/2015. Unpainted prop on the Mediterranean would foul like there's no tomorrow. In the Baltic Sea it is not common to paint the prop as there is much less growth...

Paint removed and almost done with the polishing. It was a PITA to get all the paint off. Prop had some corrosion hiding under the paint, not too bad though, for a 10 year old prop.

Started the winch maintenance, used lamp oil+brush for the cleaning. 3/6 done. The smallest, 46.2 were easy to do, 48.2's were bit more complicated, but with help from the exploded view -drawing it was easy to put them back together. The 60.2's should be bit more complicated but as said, just need to follow the drawings...

Winches were in relatively good shape, I though they had almost no friction before the cleaning. I was wrong. The cleaned and newly greased/oiled winch was considerably more light to turn. They had a tad too much grease on them, now I only applied a very thin film of Harken Winch Grease with a small paint brush and Harken Pawl Oil to the Pawls.

Helsinki Tallinna Race 2015

First Race for the boat that still haven't been on Finnish mainland:)

Helsinki Tallinna Race is one the biggest Regattas in Finland. This year 144 boats had signed up for the challenge. We sailed in the national LYS 1 Class, 40 boats competing. In addition there were LYS 2&3, Business-LYS, IRC and ORC -Classes. LYS being the biggest by far. IRC only had 5 boats in it, and ORC around 10, so what's the point? OK this weekend was very busy with other Regattas around the Baltics..

 We were able to gather a crew of 8, who came to the boat for the first time few hours before the start so no time for training this time, we just wing it and have fun while going as fast as possible:)

Wind on the start area was around 15-17 knots before the start and looked like an beam reach to the first mark. LYS class race was a chasing start and we had the third last start time, first start for all classes was at 18:00 and our start was 20:30. What happened maybe half an hour before our start was that wind dropped to below 10 knots for 1-1,5 hours. That probably had some effect on  our boatspeed in the archipelago.

Brief summary of the 41,6nm sailing over the pond puddle:

-Start with Code 0, reach to first mark
-Round the first mark wind shifted to almost running but due to the short leg we limped it to the 2. mark with the code 0 only.
-Rounding the mark 2 wind picked up and was good leg for code 0
-Mark 3, Helsinki Lighthouse. L/M Jib hoisted, Code didn't furl properly and "foredeck office" had take it down manually ie. partly furled. This costed us maybe 5 minutes as we couldn't get to the next layline to Mark 4 and drifted too much downwind. Trimming the Jib for optimal shape/power was at times challenging for the new crew in darkness. At open sea the weather was nice, slight chop slowed the fleet down a little bit.
-From open sea all the way to the finish line on Stbd Tack, switched to Code again west of island of Aegna, it worked for a while but then wind shifted again and Symmetric was required but due to new crew and almost complete darkness decision was made to just go with what we had up.

 Note: Crew beanies from our sponsor www.superyellow.fi

We finished the race at 18th, and were 13th fastest on average speed of all some 143 boats. OK results and the boat showed good potential. For the next race we fix the small issues, get a full crew of 10-12 and aim for the podium:)

 

Thanks for organizing Club and see you again next year!

Vela de la Comunidad Valenciana

FINLYS Rating for Seanna has been calculated by the almighty LYS-committee and the result is 1.36 with Code 0, with symmetric only, the magic number would have been 0.01-0.02 less... Can't leave the most fun sail out just because of a rating, right?

Today was on another visit to the North Sails Valencia sail loft where the "Working Main" was receiving some finishing touches of TLC from Alfredo.

The sail next to the old&faithful 3DL 600 is 3Di from a RC44 where we had an evil master plan to re-cut it to be a new Main for Seanna. Unfortunately the plan did not suite the rig dimensions for Seanna, but is almost perfect for 40.7's and similar.  (PM if this is of interest, lower left column!)

Again, I have to mention that service and professonialism of this sail loft is, above and beyond what a "normal" sail loft offers! :)

Valencia is a Sailing City and below is one proof that they take this business seriously.. Drain cover from the the sidewalk close to the Marina Real Juan Carlos...

Today was a mainly "in the boat -day". Cleaned the bilge under engine, oiled bottom valves, oiled/greased the steering quadrant&wires, Changed one hose, had a beer, sprayed CRC to various places, put on new mid-level LED lighting for the saloon, re-did whipping on old genoa sheets and so on... Good night from Valencia!

(The boat looks surprisingly good from the distance, it still needs a lot off buffing and polishing)

Happy Easter / Buenas Pasqua from Valencia!

Easter weekend seems to become a nice with blue skies and temperature in the mid 20's Celsius :)

Last week was phenomenal weather wise and my shoulders are a proof of that...

Sail analysis of the main...

Sail:
SailHours: 0
SailName: Mn3
SailCategory: Main
SailType: Standard
SailPurpose: Racing
SailCut: 3DL
SailCloth: 860
SailPurchase: 3/11/14 0:28
Draft:
Stripe#1: 37.6%
Stripe#2: 40.4%
Stripe#3: 42.4%
Camber:
Stripe#1: 7.2%
Stripe#2: 10.0%
Stripe#3: 9.4%
Twist:
1: 0.0°
2: 4.9°
3: 8.2°
Notes/Riggtune:
Backstay start on half aprox.

Otherwise there is still a lot to do, cleaning and shining here and there, VHF has something funky going on, need to check...

Nav. Desk and fwd. berth got new led chart/reading lights. Dimmed mood lights in the saloon will be changed to led stripe of a newer kind for optimal power consumption.

Next week a rigging guy will come for a visit, we take a look at some new sheets/halyards/control lines, etc... Winches need servicing as well, if he gives me good price maybe I use him. Winch servicing is messy business.

Was looking at the antifouling few days ago, it has some slime on it but only slime. Good. Next docking will be easy, remove (most) of the old one, put on a new and wetsand.

Was just looking at Computer displays, the one I have now, Neovo XXX, draws 42W when on a new product from Neovo draws only 18W. So that goes on the to do -list..

Enough with this writing thing, need to go up and do something usefull!

Valencia Club Race

My Sailmaker, Nacho, asked if I would be interested to come and sail during the weekend, which I answered Yes of course.. The boat would be an X-41 "Experto Catador"

Nacho picked me up ten o'clock sharp at the Marina Juan Carlos Primero, We headed down to Real Club Nautico Valencia where the boat and rest of the crew for the day waited.

I had slight problems understanding what the other were talking about but luckily we are all sailors and have a good idea what needs to be done at any given moment. So if the words were not enough, there were always pair of hands to swing around:)

Once the boat was ready we headed out to the start area. Wind was non-existing so the committee decided to wait for the thermals to pick up. There are many worse ways to spend your Sundays..

Once the decision was made to go ahead, marks were taken out and we started to make ready for the start. Some practice manouvers, concluded that the Committee Boat end was favored by about 5 degrees. We got a good start, first boat off the line, and line honors to add the cherry to the top of the ice cream that was day of Valencia sailing. So we won clearly on Sailed Time and corrected time as well...

After the race we packed up the boat and headed to the terrace of Real Club Nautico Valencia for After Sail... Thank you Valencia!

Test Sail, Cloudiness 0/8, Temperature +26C... :)

So today was the actual test of the new sails by North Sails Valencia. I have to say the service by NS Valencia has been outstanding and very professional, no the least by people with Americas Cup, TP52's, etc... on their resume.

At the end of the day I  was helped by two, among other things, Americas Cup sailors to get the boat ready for the season! That is the kind of experience you can not get with some computer software... Both Sails are within few centimeters from max. size and shape seems to be perfect, so they should be optimal for Light Airs..

Good Day. Thank you Nacho and North Sails Valencia! Boat got new sails and my forehead received a new color of pink/red :)

Tomorrow I think I will do little bit of washing and take a look at the rigging/sheets etc...

P.S Please do not look at the fenders and other stuff lying around... they will be gone when we actually get underway...