It appears that I haven't posted here. Luckily, I have notes. Better later than never.
Obviously, there were two of us for the KoPu DH 2020 race - Masha and I. The racecourse was KoPu Tuesday Race D which greatly follows the HLKK racecourse 1. SW wind 7(10) m/s, easing as forecasted.
We came to the starting area in a little advance to check the sail trim and the starting area. The sail choice was G3 + full main, and spinnaker. The pin side was slightly better, but being one of the smallest and the slowest boats on the racecourse we decided to start at the RC vessel seeking for clear wind.
The start was OK. Sailing to the N mark south of Melkki was staying in the windward position to the fleet - made us sailing extra distance but it was worth it. We saw Pikky Myy starting below some nasty covering boats, but she was keeping a good pace and arrived at the mark not too far behind us.
We came to the mark on STBD and soon after the mark we tacked to PORT. Primarily not to stay in the bad wind of the boats in front of us, but also looking for less chop on the right side of the course. Halfway to Rysäkari large boats started to overtake us, and it was a convenient moment to make correcting tack, restore the windward position and returned to the favourable PORT tack. We then sailed as close as possible to Rysäkari, and made good speed and gain in the calmer waters behind the island. Pikku Myy seemed to gain on us in the first part of the leg, but we managed to build more distance on them in the second part of the leg. There was an H-boat in front of us and we got significantly closer to them during the beat towards Rysäkari. Unfortunately, a pack of 3-4 large boats on approach to the weather mark forced us to sail higher to stay in the clear wind - here we lost what we just gained on the H-boat, but Pikku Myy seemed to stay well behind us.
The reaching leg was almost no surprise. No spinnaker AWA unfortunately. Pikku Myy and BB10 (a droid from Star Wars film?) with their long waterlines were gaining on us fast. There was a strange incident there - a First 36.7 was aiming to overtake us on the windward side and we decided to not to lift them expecting that they pass us quickly on the reaching course. However, once they covered us, they seemed like they lost interest in racing, relaxed and lost the speed. It felt like infinity until we got clear wind again. I don't understand. During that encounter, Pikku Myy and BB10 closed to us too much.
After Rönnkobben we hoisted spinnaker, not as quick as it could have been though. We nicely sailed downwind, rounded the green Ådholm, then broad reach to the red Orholm mark. Until this point, we built distance on Pikku Myy and BB10 again. At the mark we had an unfortunate gybe - Masha slipped and fell on the bow, the pole was swinging left and right, I had to sail Subbota straight downwind which was 35 degrees off our course. Eventually, Masha found her way back on track, we completed the gybe and sailed towards the finish line. It was long three minutes we were sailing off the course! It looked like some boats behind us were following us for a while during our exercise which has no reasonable explanation, unless they were under imagination that the finish line was in the same place as the starting line.
On the final approach, the BB10 came close. They tried to get the windward position, but quickly gave up and stayed in our leeway at our speed till the finish line. We were approximately 1 minute before Pikku Myy at the line.
Thanks to all competitors, especially the fellow-boat Pikku Myy! It was fun!
Statistics: Posted by alex — Wed Nov 18, 2020 00:06 am
