TIKK TAKK

Flax is now in real summer mode.

The interior is very cosy with the textile bags on the sides. The cockpit is mounted with windbreakers. The sprayhood is mounted. Touring sails are mounted and the genua got its new ondeck sailcover so that rigging is done in minutes and the interior is kept free of sails.

After fixing the last details I took her out in a fresh breese yesterday single handed. It was blowing around 8 s/m i guess (16 knots). The waves had white tops and the sea was quite choppy. Even with full sails and only me to weigh her down she behaved very well and the tillerpilot had no problems to deal with the boat. Only when tacking the tillerpilot is too slow. This is because i think i mounted the pilot too far from the rudder hinge. Will check if i can replace it. I cope with this by trimming the main tight and loosen the jib a bit early to help the boat through the tack.

The logg showed 7,5 knots on the most so i had a great time.

Tips: When sailing with pilot trim with a wide steering groove: add twist to the sails and tighten the genua leach to make a round entry to the genua.

BTW the engine is repaired and new petrol hose is mounted. I only have to do a change to the petrol hose to make it possible for the tank to be stoved under deck while motoring. As it is now you have to take the tank on deck.

Sætre Kruset was our last race this spring.

We started with very little wind and the wind came from the north so it was a spinnakker start. We noticed the local hero in his Safir and a Soling i recogniced fromlast years went all the way very close to the shore of Håøya. We followed.

After rounding the south end of the island we had a very good period and closed the gap between us and the leaders. We went to the west of the sound wich only a few other boats did. This turned out to be a mistake though the Mumm 36 that went exactly the same way just minutes before us seemed to do very well. There was a strong current against us so we tried to kiss the shore for every tack. though we ended up a period in the middle when crossing back over the sound. But at that stage the wind stopped close to the shore and our possition was an advantage, but by then the Safir had escaped this closing door as he did with the two next ones, the northerly turning point and even the westerly turning point. in both cases he increased his lead while we were stuck in the decreasing winds, we really felt like somebody smashed the doors in our face.

Well we ended third in our class and fifth over all which is actualy not bad. But sometimes the sun, the heat and still makes it unbearable to keep concentration. So parts of this race were causing great suffering.

Now we are looking forward to the autumn and Norwegian championship!

Lower that spi pole!!!!

We had a fantastic Færder race with brilliant condition. The weather was in the end not too bad and we only had a short period in the start when it was raining. We started at the middle of the line. This is where we did the biggest mistake of the day. We actually were over the line which gave us a 2.5% punishment. Didnt realise this before at the finish when looking at the results.

Winds were from north all the race and we went with spinnakker all the way to Hollender.

The boats that started at the lee end of the line and kept that lee possition all the way to Slemmestad the first buoy did the best. We did go to windward to get free wind, but this was actually not a good plan.

Then we did small errors all the way. We didnt really sail according to the currents. Next year we need to get the current maps again. I was kind of not trudsting them because they did not mach reality earlier years, but well, they seem to be quite accurate. Through the Drøbak sound we were happy to have great sailors like Tor Eriksen and Mathias Friis behind us. They cought us in the end of the sound and we tried to catch up.

In Breidangen when the fjord opened we sailed to the west. This was probably not ideal, but we left some others who were more in the middle of the fjord behind. At Bastøy we sailed close to the shore and then broke off towards the middle but just a bit too late. This is when we passed Tor in Calypso. We went to the middle and quite straight towards Hollender the southerly rounding point.

Despite a somehow desperate spinnakker take down (the lighthouse came up suddenly very fast) we manged to squise between a boat and the concrete of the house and spinn off and we left a whole bunch of boats behind.

After Hollender it was four and a half hour of upwind sailing. We rounded half past eleven and because of the cloudy conditions it was quite dark for a Norwegian midsummer. Well this is embarrassing: the charts didnt show all the way to Hollender! Bad planning! I know the area quite well and knew of the rocks close to the shore but not good enough to dare to go close  which we actually should have done to avoid the current and the waves. But all in all we got a very nice trim and fast sail up to the finish line. At Åsgårdstrand the last rounding point we left a brand new X-37, an Old and beatyful Carrerra Helmsman and a Banner 28 behind us! sometimes you wonder.... These boats have a much higher rating than the Express.

Well we ended up on a 21st place of 40 boats but if we disregard the 2.5% punishment we were on 17th. I think that we can count with this and hence we achieved the goal to be in the better half of the fleet. We sailed 15 minutes faster than Calypso and not far behind Xania and some other boats that normally sail very well. So the Express class is really competitive and its well done by our friends in the club Rock All who won with Impuls on a second and Xdama on a fourth. Its amazing. We learned a lot and hope to do better next year.

BTW congrats to Siri the skipper of Beenis Fire and Preben who got a third place in the Maxi77 class. Also Mathis with Spurven and his new unfair handicap did actually very well with a 12th place in LYS 1,07-1,12.

I added some videos from youtube, will eventually add our video, its funny with our fishing hats in the rain but also informative to see the trimming errors we do. we need to go through the basics of spinntrim again. But thats the fun part of sailing : always something to learn and a failure to regret :)

Top mark north-west of Husbergholmen. Wind 1-2 m/s south - drifting west. Elisa, Mona and Preben (part time skipper). Only one (shortened) race due to lack of wind.

We had a fairly good start with good speed over the line (althoug a bit down on the line and actually a bit further from the top mark it seemed). Managed to maintain speed with leading boats (we were in the lead). Did a tack to early at langøyene and suffered quite a bit because of this. To many tacks in the light conditions, but it must be mentioned we were a bit out of options due to the first early tack.

After rounding of top mark we hoisted the spin but it did'nt actually fly. The wind shifted and we hoisted the genua on our way down (so did everybody else).

We managed to catch up with the boats in front and where almost touching the boat in front of us. We tried to go on top, but it failed as the wind became to sharp and both boats "stalled" in the light conditions. Suddenly multiple boats was moving on top of us and it became very disturbing. Well, I decided to try and pass him on leeward (to late) and somehow it allmost worked! He got in over finish (a shortened race) a "fist" in front of us, so it was very close. I guess we should have done this much earlier, as we somehow managed to get a few fractions of a knot more speed on the boats in front (we did trim the sails franatically, well I was I guess). Mona had the rudder during my trimming exercise, which I believe was a good idea at the time - and the fine trimming in these conditions is very sensitive, and some experience is required.

Lessons to be learned: Never stop trimming in light conditions. Keep boat speed at all cost (remarks from the OS coach)! After rounding of top mark we never had more than 0.8 knots - somehow I see this as fun as well :-) We probably could have luffed the upwind boat to a stall and won over this boat with a fist or two (I guess was to inexperienced to figure that in the heat of it all).

We finished as 8th boat which could easily been 6th or perhaps 5th, if we (I) had focused on boat speed instead of (local) individual position.

Oh. I forgot to mention an important issue that we touched into last year. In very light conditions the spin boom can be on deck to ease the weight of the main boom. It allows the main boom to fly more easily - which in turn allows for more twist in the main sail, and which can translate into more speed very light conditions. There is a thin line of keeping the flow of air over both sails which is important. Some times the main must be flattened (very light conditions), and some times you could allow more depth in the sails. This is a matter of fine trimming and is a noble art.  

By the way. I believe we was 8th in the spring series in Oslo seilforening. Not very good, but not very bad either (19 or 20 boats total). With two races 2 positions better we could easily been at 6th place which is very close to respectable.

If vacuum is the absence of matter, why would you put so much of it in space?

Thanks to Elisa and Mona which are always eager to learn and focused on sailing well. Hopefully I'm not completely wrong all of the time!

Good luck at the Færder race! Beat them all!

Preben (very part time skipper)