Mid-May wonderfully sunny days. Lady Godiva Sail Racing Team skippered by Anders Dahlsjö suggested a shorthanded offshore training with a pretty intense course around Kattegatt and stretching over 3 days and 3 nights.
As we are planning to participate at the Vegvisir Race in late summer running the 2Star course over 225nm (not at all certain that we will be allowed due to border restrictions related to covid19), we decided to jump on the opportunity to try out the boat offshore over a long period and in particularly our routines and ability to cope.
It turned out to be only 2 boats and we settled for a course that would allow both boats to start and finish close to our harbors, but given Lady Godiva’s greater speed, we would meet more or less in the middle. However things went quite differently. We had 3 days of almost no wind and were forced to shorten the course several time to make it within 3 days and we never managed to meet Lady Godiva. Start Marstrand, port rounding East of Skagen, port rounding North of Läsö, starboard rounding Hätteberget, arrive in Marstrand.
The light winds made it impossible to test the autopilot in tougher conditions, however to be able to steer at best and feel pressure in light air, we have not used the AP for about 90% of the circuit. Which was in itself a test of our ability to steer many hours in a row.
Since we are not racing Vegvisir under a handicap system, we decided to sail with the old genoa 130%, which in spite of its age and conditions, never stops to deliver and surprise me with how it powers up the boat in winds up to 8kn. In fact, in spite we do not measure a genoa in our wardrobe, I may change my mind in coming seasons.
The new light wind spinnaker has been up and flying about 50% of the circuit. It was new and we sailed just a few minutes before, so this was a great opportunity to try out for good and figure out how to trim it. It turns out to be slightly more difficult to trim that our AP as it require constant attention, but it is real fast, especially sailing very deep where dead-downwind allows us to perform over our polar.
We had a little reaching as well North of Läsö where we tried out the heavy reacher in light wind and managed to sail it up to 80 TWA in 6kn TWS effectively, eating up some of the range where either our genoa or a code would be needed (if we were under handicap system). Any more wind and the apparent wind forced us to bear off. That was also the limit where leeway due to excessive heel was acceptable at about 8 degrees.
In flat waters and with loads of porpoises around and behind the boat, this has been a great opportunity to observe thermal patterns develop over many hours in open water.
As for our routines, we divided up every night in 8 hours and slept 4 hours each in 1 hour shifts. Whilst 8 hours of total sleep may be sufficient over 3 days and we were relatively alert throughout the training, it was mental torture as 1 h shift means a little time to fall asleep, get some sleep, get dressed and actually awake and out in the damp. We might have concluded that our pattern was highly inefficient looking at it on paper; yeah well, we concluded it the hard way. Which leaves us something to figure out before the race in September.
All in all we were very satisfied with the experience, although 2 or 3kn wind more would have been appreciated. Our course was 86.7 nm, actually sailed 96 nm in 31h 51m. It was a slow sail, but beautiful and loads of lessons learnt came out of it.