As usual, good things come to an end and Veloce is now dry with her keel on the tarmac.
2020 has been a different year for all of us, in every possible way. Looking back at it however, I can only say that it has been a formidable sailing season aboard Veloce.
We decided during winter to give it a proper try and race Veloce for the first time with somewhat higher ambition. With a boat now capable to sail up to her potential, a verified rating certificate and a lot (more than usual anyway) of time in our hands, we splashed Veloce in March and had about 6 weeks on the water before the racing season began.
I am very satisfied with the results and our steep improvement curve. Not to mention the considerable experience cumulated in several sailing days and nights.
Club racing on Tuesday evenings was a great training platform where we performed better than we expected and perfectioned execution. Or results in the serie were 2-3-2-8-4-6-4-3-1-2-3. Satisfying indeed. Very light airs dominated Bohusracet, Tjörn Runt and Öckerö Shorthanded Race and this forced us to improve focus and attention to details. Midsummer Solo Challenge, Gothenburg Lighthouses Solo Race and Robline Skagen Race were raced in the wind range we like best, between 18 and 24kts. Simply glorious sailing. A video to reminisce Gothenburg Lighthouses Solo Race aboard Veloce.
As a bonus we crushed the 12 knots boat speed barrier and set a new record at 12.1 kn on a reach. A respectable speed, I reckon, for a 32ft yacht displacing over 4 tons.
Some considerations:
Time on the water
For once, having splashed early, we did not need to rush. Considerable time on the water went in figuring out how maneuvers work best in different conditions as well as in training headsail changes. We experimented different ways to peel spinnakers and came to the conclusion that the probability to screw up shorthanded was not worth the saved time and instead we trained to douse one spinnaker and hoist another within 90 seconds. We worked a lot on sailing our target speeds and angles.
During our evening club races we made a point of swapping roles at each race. The idea was to be able to be interchangeable on longer doublehanded regatta; it turned out to be one of the most successful strategies as we found out where and when each of us works best. Johan driving upwind in light and medium air for example, gets out of Veloce the best VMG by far and I am happy to hand over the helm.
Sail inventory
With a complete sail inventory, we figured out what works and what doesn’t, which feeds back to the plan and budget for next year. We started the season believing that a medium jib was going to be good enough for the light stuff. We soon realized that Veloce requires an overlapping genoa to come to life, feel on the helm and find her groove in winds up to 10kn.
In many an occasion, I wished we could reef our headsail rather than changing to a heavy jib. This observation spelled the end of foil and furler on Veloce’s forestay. At first I was skeptical as it might be something desirable by a next owner. In the end however, I figured that I never met any next owner yet and therefore whatever suites me at the moment goes! More to come on the subject of changing forestay during winter.
Here how we set up the inventory for this season. Several changes will come and, later on, a new post will follow.
Preparation
It is often said that races are won before crossing the starting line. While many factors play in winning a race, it is most definitely true that races can be lost before starting. We have put considerable time in making sure that the boat is up to her potential and in thinking through the layout and positions for easiest handling. A lot of effort went in finding sail range overlaps and fine-tuning our polar diagrams.
We started running weather routing a few times a day, a few days before a race, playing different scenarios and planning different actions depending on scenarios.
At each race, we tried showing up on the course at least one hour before our start. Going through basic maneuvers just before racing has often saved us from major unexpected screw-up during the race. We also used this time to figure out the best start tactics and secure many surprisingly good starts throughout the season.
After each race, we looked back at it and going through mistakes, it became apparent that most of them could have been foreseen and avoided through better preparation. A very constructive insight.
This is why planning for 2021 begins already next week aboard Veloce!
Lessons learnt
In spite of thorough preparation, We could not always execute well. I often found myself not sailing by the numbers, steering smaller angles upwind than our target. No excuses, unfortunately. It felt right, but it probably wasn’t.
I often played safe by not calling a sail change, instead stretching a little the range of each sail. Again, it felt right there and then. Looking back however, it often wasn’t the right choice.
The tradeoff between what feels right in certain circumstances and what is right based on facts and numbers is a matter of balance and skills. Hopefully, this season has taught us (especially me) a few things and I will be able to call for better judgement in future.
Covid-19 messed with our plans (as well as most other people’s) and some of the races which we planned to attend, never took place. Vegvisir, to name one. One positive consequence was that Gothenburg Lighthouses Solo Race was born, with a wonderful response by the local sailing community and a high demand for a repeat event.
We really enjoyed every race we took part in as well as the many spontaneous facebook-arranged trainings and race-to-the-race events. A surprisingly active season!
Thanks Johan for being my co-skipper in most inshore races and be patient enough to bear with my contradicting directions in the frenzy and chaos of starting-lines and roundings, not to mention my weight-saving paranoia. Thanks Filip, my co-skipper in our adventures off-shore, for loving wind, waves ad lack of sleep as much as I do!
