scaprat

Logbook Sept 24th, 2015

Following my Mini Transat participation in 2015 I am now publishing the logbook entries of each day – exactly one year after they were written down.

Day 6 of Leg 1, Sept 24th, 2015:

We are sailing off the coast of Portugal, passing Lisboa. The previous day had brought a lot of wind and difficult conditions which made me neglect eating and resting. As a result I have been sleeping a lot last night and the performance of the boat suffers.
As you can see from the logbook entries, it would have been possible to hoist the Code5 at midnight again and generally I am sailing very defensive the entire day.
The Adrena track shows large parts in yellow where I sailed the boat far under its potential. That also showed in the ranking as Victor (599) turns my 14nm lead into a 14nm lead for him over the course of the day.

But nevertheless it is a nice day in stabilizing tradewinds, offering greate sailing conditions.

00:00

Comments from the Logbook:
0400: Shook out a reef, now: Main(-) and Solent(-)
0430: Hoisted the Code 5.
0650: Hoisted the Medium Spi (reefed) and shook out the reef in the Solent. Now: Main(-) + Solent + Medium Spi(-)

07:30

Comments from the Logbook:
1000: Switched to Big Spinnaker, still one reef in the main.
1030: Listened to Weather forecaset. Should have 12-20kn from NNE to NE. Sounds like proper azores high. Ranking 29th series.
1100: new waypoint: Lanzarote Approach!
1530: Gybed to stb-bow but the angle is bad also waves are coming in at a bad angle.
1600: Gybed back.

16:21

Comments from the Logbook:
1800: shook out reef in the main
1900: the tackline is slipping through its clutch again. Switched with the spi hoisted by taking the load off using the karver cleat (amazing thing!) and switched it with the babystay clutch. Need to switch the interior in Lanzarote.

20:00

Comments from the Logbook:
2000: Jaanus (787) heard me trying to reach a support boat to report my position, we chat for a while how much more relaxed the sailing is today. I ask a nearby cargo if he could try and relay our positions to a support but, the cargo tries for 10 minutes but to no avail.

24h distance: 177sm

Logbook Sept 20th, 2015

2nd Day of Leg 1, Sept 20th 2015:
06:00

Comments from the Logbook
Quentin is visible on the horizon to the west, some boats south. Zero wind.
Around 7am: Radek is having keel trouble and will go diving, asks for someone to make sure he arrives back on deck after a while. 20 Minutes later he is back on deck.
09:25: a little bit of wind is there, pulls us very far NW, tacking (others remain on course).
10:30: switching to Code5 to try and make more west
11:43: took the Code 5 down

12:00

Comments from the Logbook:
12:00: attempted to receive weather forecast, didn’t find any usable signal.
13:00: Code0 hoisted, reefed the solent.
Quentin still on the horizon, Radek about 4nm north. Some sails on the horizon.

15:00

Comments from the Logbook:
none

18:00

Bemerkungen aus dem Logbuch:
19:50 Uhr: Wind dreht! Code0 runter, Wende. Ich sehe auf dem AIS die Flotte in der Flaute liegen, versuche mit der Wende der Flaute zu entgehen.

21:00

Comments from the Logbook:
Around 11pm: very (very very very very very) close encounter with MS Emden. While I was avoiding one Cargo using the AIS I did not realize there was another one. AIS also did not show it since I was in “collision mode” with the other ship. At 1nm from the cargo, our passing distance is still 0.015sm, luckily we both manage to alter course sufficiently so we pass each other at .3nm.
Florian 2nm ahead of me, Andy temporarily on the AIS.

Fall training with Lorient Grand Large

Winter’s coming and that means a final set of training sessions with my training group Lorient Grand Large before the end of the year.

The trainings I participate in begin saturday’s around 09:30am with a short briefing on the pontoon, the boats ready to leave the dock. Once out of the bay of Lorient, the sessions are a mix of speed-tests, maneuvers (tacking/gybing/sail changes), fun games (like the game where you have to attach, hoist & unroll your Code0, then sail with it two minutes, then take it down again, into the cockpit and all over again, the one who manages most hoists in 20 minutes wins) and towards the end of the day usually a race around some buoys back to the harbor.
We usually arrive back around 4pm where we get around 30 minutes of time to tidy up the boat, then we meet for a debriefing with videos, photos and feedback. Once I’m out of the briefing and have finished tidying up the boat and making the odd repair it is around 8pm.
On Sunday it’s the same program but we start at 8 am.

In October we did two weekends of training doublehanded where we mainly focused on sail trim with our trainer Tanguy Leglatin giving feedback on the water so we can find the perfect trim and mark our lines to be able to reproduce the settings lateron.
The two following weekends in November then focused on optimizing the maneuvers in singlehanded mode, working more actively with the pilot.

Mid-November we had a quite windy training with an impressive swell rolling from the Atlantic and a wind of 20 knots, the peak being 28 knots consistent. It was very interesting to do a long upwind speedtest in these conditions where Tanguy would instruct us to tack on his signal. As we were a large group of 12 boats it became immediately visible how much you can win or lose with a proper or screwed up tack.

When the wind picked up to 28 knots we reefed the solent (the main was already in 1st reef) and tried (my personal less favorite) Code0-“game” (ref. above). With a boatspeed of already 9 knots (without the Code0) and quite gusty conditions it was a wet ride and with the odd autopilot in our fleet not working perfectly you also had to make sure not to collide with another boat whose skipper was wrestling with his Code0 on the bow.
My participation in that exercise was over after my 2 minutes of sailing with Code0 (doing 12kn) when it turned out that the furling line had separated from the furler and I had the pleasure of taking down the 30sqm foil sail in a classical Spinnaker “douse”, trying to squeeze it down the companionway. Once that was done I turned back towards Ile de Groix and soon the rest of the group caught up and we had a nice ride back to Lorient with the Code5 (storm spinnaker) doing 12-16 knots.

The sunday was a bit of a contrast. On the way out of the bay we had the big kite up and gybed our way out (12 boats again) but once we reached the end of Lorient’s southern approach the sea was dead calm. Turned out we were in the center of a depression, with impressive clouds at the horizon with blue skies but not the slightest wind for us.
For two hours we tried to compare Code0s vs. Code5s and later any sail combination there was to make any headway until we finally gave up at around 2pm when a tiny bit of thermic gave us just enough wind to get back into port.

Some impressions from Lorient

Some impressions from the boats in Lorient. We have a VO65, Open 60, Class 40 and my mini. Looking back I should have taken some pics of the 80,70 and 50ft trimarans as well but only monohulls for now.
Some really nice rigging and splicing ideas out there, dyneema everywhere. Although it is still weird to see the mast of an open 60 being held in place by 8mm dyneema lashings.
On another note I find it interesting that the cockpit of an Open60 and a Class40 doesn’t really differ much in size any more. Trend goes towards more protected, smaller cockpits.
The last two pictures show the bank of “constrictor” clutches on GDF Suez. sweet!