The next revolution in yachting? 19 May 2008

Winning some pounds of best Swiss Chocolate
on 17th of May
There is a race on our lake called „Chocolate Cup“.
It starts middle of may in front of the legendary
chocolate factory of „Lindt & Sprüngli“ near Zurich
and it is the first race of the season of our annual
championship. The fastest boat wins a few kg of
best Swiss Chocolate from this legendary and
worldfamous chocolate brand.
Forecast was a decent northerly breeze around
10kts max and nice weather. I hate this winddirection in that part of the lake, as it always turns
out to be chaotic....gusty and shifty without ends. It
turned out to be even worse, as wind set in much
stronger than predicted – we had gusts up to 25kts
(we now enjoy the service of a battery of instruments, so no estimating anymore).
Before take off we thought of putting a reef in. Really
hard gusts following each other in shorter periods. I
decided to wait to 10 min. before starting signal to
decide. It turned out to be right, as wind was
dropping for the starting procedure. So we sailed the
whole race with main fully up.
After the start – we wanted to let the „normal“ boats
go first to avoid any risks on the starting line, which
was much too short for over 60 boats and above all
with wind from the side. One of the gusts in the
wrong moment means average boats sail with maybe
8 kts and the Quant30 with around 15 or even more
on a crowdy starting line – not my taste. All the more
as we wanted do take care of the material for the
important races to come in Geneva and Lake of
Constance etc.
So the run to the first mark was a very close reach of
about 2.5 miles or something. We passed most of
the boats very quickly. Then wind was dropping and
one 10m boat was sailing almost same speed
(displacement sailing!) for some moments and there
has been no chance to pass it on leeward side.
(coming from behind fully on the foil it would have
been possible as you pass so quickly that you even
feel almost no influence of a boat to windward).
But with the next little gust we sailed away clearly,
arriving the mark as first boat.
I thought that long upwind leg would get a bit difficult
for us, as with the gusty conditions we couldn’t really
take advantage of the foil and we had too much sail
up. So it was a very bumpy business and the crew
had to work hard on the sails (they did again a nice
job) but to my surprise the fastest boats (for upwind
courses) couldn’t really follow us. The weathermark
in this race is lying close to the shore, which really is
a pain in the a...... in northerly breeze. Wind on and
off every other minute and chaotic pattern on top. In
our case wind off – of course. Not a big problem for
heavy boats as they have some „torque“ sailing
through the lulls much more consistently, as we are
doing with our super light boat. All the more as we
had to tack two times for nothing. We lost most of
our advantage as a consequence.
Downwind we waited too long with hoisting the kite
as winddirection was not clear to the next mark
(which was the pin end of the starting line again).
After a third of the downwind we saw that the kite
could work and yes it does and we were lying clearly
in front of the fleet again at the downwind mark. We
had to sail another round and this time, the upwind
went even better and we put some minutes between
us and the next competitors. After rounding the
weathermark our advantage was big enough to save
the kite and we just sauntered to the finish with still
6 min. in reserve over 2nd boat.
It was quite interesting because these have been
conditions and a course which doesn’t really give us
a big advantage (sometimes i felt like flying a
helicopter in the living room on these short legs) and
i also thought that it would be much more
challenging to be in control of the boat in conditions
with a crew partly not really used to sail together. But
they did very well and all in all it turned out to be
almost easy in a way. Amazing. I think with the Q28 it
would have been much more challenging. So the
steps we made from the 28‘ to the 30‘ went in the
right direction as it seems. But there is no doubt, that
downwind in 20kts plus with the big kite, loads turn
to „big boat business“ almost.
So now i am looking forward to enjoy some bites of
chocolate till next time
Hang loose Michi
QUANTBOATS, c/o Bucher&Schmid AG, Alpenquai 13, CH - 6005 Luzern
Tel. 041 360 22 67, Mobile +41 (0)79 340 44 22, [email protected], www.quant-boats.com