Race debriefing

It was a great day out training – I have learnt a lot - now I am ready for the real thing :).  Oh, this was the real thing already?!? But I had not had a chance to practice in conditions even remotely similar! Well, ok, the others probably had not had much practice in such conditions, either…

Let me set the scene for you. Throughout my preparations, I had flat water and 4 Beaufort maximum.  Now, the forecast for the actual regatta was saying 6-7 Beaufort. As I woke up on Saturday morning, I had butterflies in my stomach. But at 9h00 there was rain and hardly any wind. So we all started under full sails – I had even pre-rigged the big spi. By the time we reached Versoix, it was a solid force 5 and getting stronger. As we reached le Grand Lac, we had gusts of 30 knots. By then, most of us reefed – or abandoned.

In total, out of 92 boats on the starting line, 52 abandoned. Here are the results in the Surprise class:

As you can see, Mic Mac finished 12^th out of 24 boats that started. Interestingly, I could see 8 more Surprises registered for the race – I wonder if they decided not to come because of the forecast.

Finishing as the 12^th Surprise is way above my original expectations, but now of course I wish I had come higher among those who actually finished. A couple of places better was within my reach: already one place I lost because hoisting the spi too early on the way back – and being overtaken as I was struggling with it. I will not go through the whole race now (you can – if you want - by replaying Mic Mac’s GPS track in Google Earth), but here are my personal highlight moments:

1. Working on the foredeck to change the head sail;
2. Seeing 14 knots of speed on the GPS while surfing under spinnaker on the way back.

On the other hand, the worst moment was an uncontrolled gybe as a result of getting the spi wrapped around the forestay at night – this one is really not to be repeated.

Overall, feeling in control of the boat in 30 knots of wind and alone was a great experience. With all that I have learnt, I think I am now finally ready for this Translemanique race - some time in the future, maybe? Even though it will not be easy to repeat this year’s result…

Thanks for reading!

Michał