200 ton Lionhart - sejlskift er bare besværlige - fotoserie

Bouwe Bekking skriver fra Palma til minbaad.dk:

The last two days of the Palma Vela event on Lionheart we sailed short distance courses. 

On saturday we had a 38 mile race, which had a good variation of upwind, reaching and running, but it meant as well that the foredeck crew had to work their butts off. 

We used three different A-sails, not only for the different angles, but as well the seabreeze build up strong again.

Overlappende fok på i start 

We started with the big overlapping jib in about 10 knots of breeze and even that we had a superb start, we couldn’t make gains against the lighter boats in these conditions, but we hung in.  

The acceleration is just shocking on a boat like this, so you have to adapt to this while doing tactics. 

You have to judge all the time if making two extra tacks are weighing of against sailing in wrong windshift for a while,  especially in a place like Palma, local knowledge is an advantage and that helps a lot making the right decisions and minimizing the tacks.  

Start med Deckman computer

The starts we do mainly on the Deckman computer and of course own judgement of time and distance and placing yourself in such a way that you can avoid traffic. 

In general we make our final approach with three minutes to go, reaching max speed and aiming to hit the line within 5 seconds of the gun. 

Læs mere om Lionhart og se billeder fra kahyt

To our surprise we managed this in every race we did. At the upwind mark we rounded 4th and were the first to hoist an A-sail on a very tight angle and quickly after the others followed us. 

Sail changes are a nightmare and when the breeze starting picking up quickly, we ended on the top end of our overlapping jib and decided to carry on to see how the boat would behave. 

Hårdt sejlskift på Lionhart.

Se galleri på minbaad.dk om sejladsen på Mallorca

The mainsail started to go inside out, but the numbers where still good, so that was a good learning curve.  

But going upwind in a seaway and in the mean time packing and putting wooling the 1000 square metre gennaker is a challenge.

The sail is just laying lose on the deck, as there is no hatch, so it is always a relieve when the sail is safely in the bag.  

We scored a 2nd pace in the maxi class that day and knew with one race to go we could have a crack at the podium,as a discard would come in place, so we could drop the race we didn’t start.  

Rundede efter to Wally's

The last day we started in a 15 knot northerly, which we knew that this would eventually die , as the SW seabreeze would eventually come in.

Started this time with full pace at the pin end and just rounded the topmark behind the two Wally’s.  

As expected the wind started dropping, so decided to do a jib change on the short run. Questions were asked, but I pushed it through, a good exercise but potentially a risky call. 

It was a frenzy, with the two huge sails on the foredeck, did two gybes in the mean time, but the guys managed it well in time. 

The breeze was dropping more and more and the RC made the wise decision to shorten the course. 

Tre overalt i maxi klassen - lige efter Ussing Andersen

We ended up in 3rd place overall in the maxi class, just got beaten by Ib Ussing Andersen on Open Season, while we pipped Jens Christensen on J-one. 

All in all a good week, a J class is a different beast in a lot of ways, a very steep learning curve regarding everything and everyhting was well above expectations we had. 

The next event we race against 4 others J’s in Falmouth, who have been racing their boats for several years, so that will be really exiting and especially to see how we are going.

Cheers

Bouwe

Lionhart på Mallorca.