Yesterday was the first opportunity to test the light air genoa I described in the last post. When the sailmaker had finished making the sail it was measured for ORCi club and IRC handicap and I updated the ORCi rating for the coming season. The APH, All Purpose Handicap, TOT, Time on Time went from 1.2357 to 1.2426 which appears a small penalty for the improved performace that I expect. The rated area came in at 49.54 m2 which is a little less than expected but a big jump up from the 42 m2 of the No1 Jib.
The breeze was forecast to be around 6 knots with the occasional gust to 9 kts and well below the upper limit of the sail so we set it up full of anticipation.
The start was downwind in a Westerly breeze forcasting to shift to the North. Right on the start the breeze went a little north so we started with a reaching line out to leeward and immediately pulled away from everyone except the light air downwind specialists, a Flying Tiger and a sports boat with a huge genoa. While the breeze was on the beam and fresh we kept pulling away but as it died and went aft the fleet came back at us with breeze and three yachts sailed by.
Some of the crew thought we should have poled out the genoa but as it was our first use I wanted to be conservative and as the breeze was flicking around I was happy with my decision. At the end of the run we rounded outside three yachts, A First 40, a Sydney 36 CR and a RP 36. We managed to round tighter being the fourth of the group and immediately pointed above these three. Perhaps we experienced on of the flicks to the North that had been coming across the fleet but whatever the reason we were soon above and ahead and chasing the light weight leader.
As our first competetive beat to windward I was getting a lot of advice and most of it excellent. Halyard tensions were adjusted as were sheet tensions and I had no time to look where the competition was heading. To complicate the matter we tacked below the second fleet which rounds a shorter distance mark and some of them are hard to tell apart from our Div 1 fleet.
My crew kept reassuring me we were ahead of our competition except for the lighweight Britannia and pulling away. It turns out that they were right and at the first opportunity to look I could not see the trailing Div 1 fleet buried amongst the Div2 fleet.
The latter part of the windward work was a reach away to a turning mark down in Rose Bay where we were going neck and neck with Britannia but then it was a windward work to the Naval mooring buoy. On this leg we got a lucky break with the wind strength across the course and finally caught Britannia. On the next leg the wind had turned west again meaning it was dead square so we had to pole out the genoa and to our pleasant suprise we kept Britannia at bay and did so for the final beat to the shortened course finish.
We scored fastest time by a minute and the yachts that rounded the first mark with us were 8, 9 and 13 miutes behind.
Out tacking angles were not great but we had good speed and perhaps we had a better run of the wind shifts. Indeed the first work to the West to the Naval mooring buoy was a single beat for much of the leg while the second work was dead into the breeze so it is hard to exprapolate yesterdays performance to future races.
I am looking forward to more light wind races to confirm the results from yesterday. On the other hand if it is fresh we know we can do well particularly with the fresh air downwind legs where our higher prismatic coefficient on our long waterline length makes for fast running. The second set of tracks above show our angles from the prevous week when the breeze was around 15 knot and we managed a fastest times by just 5 seconds.
A special thanks to Dudley Dix our naval architect who took our Didi 40 Cr design and created the new Didi 120 which is proving to be a formidable yacht in the 40 ft range.
Also a special thanks to long time friend and Sailmaker, Andrew OBrien for this new genoa made to fit the tight tolerances of our rig and set between the inner diagnoals, the outer verticals and below the lower spreaders.