October 9 - "How was it?"
The race finished 7 weeks ago. But YCC members keep asking me how it was. I'm surprised about the interest. So how was it?
It was like a military boot camp. It was really hard, being concentrated for 23 hours. I reached my limits.
Our club member Michal K. invented a nice metaphor:
"Translémanique en solitaire: It's like graduation."
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To start with the bad message. I was almost the last one of the regatta.
I left Geneva on Saturday 9:30 and I was back the next day at 8:12. It took me 22:42 hours to come home.
The good message: I arrived just right for the breakfast.
Rank 104 out of 109. That hurt my ambition. I expected more of me.
Some members answered to that: "Andreas, hey! You made it. Sailing for 23 hours is quite an achievement." True.
The fastest Surprise was 14:51 hours on its way, seven hours less than me. 42 out of 109 participants came on Surprise. I was on rank 38.
The Surprise class is a talent pool. The best Surprise skipper of the Translémanique won also the whole race in adjusted time (ranking).
What does mean adjusted time? It is like in golf. Stronger players have a bigger handicap than weak ones, so that both can compete with each other. Smaller and weaker boats get a bonus, whereas big and strong boats get a handicap. The following example makes it clear.
The real time winning skipper was a guy from Vevey with a powerfull boat. (Here the real time ranking.) He arrived on Saturday 9 pm in Geneva, just right for the dinner.
His boat is a Psaros40. 71 m2 sail area, a 19 meter
high mast and a 12 meter long hull. That is about the double of the size of a
Surprise. This boat has a moving keel (to adjust the weight depending on the wind force and direction) and it was constructed 2002 for the Bol d'Or. (Details for the nerds on Wikipedia in German only).
A intriguing detail: This skipper was on rank 91 in adjusted time ! In other words: Having the best boat does not mean that you are the best sailor. With my rank of 104, I was not much worse than the fastest one in real time.
Right for the dinner: The fastest boat (real time) arriving in Geneva after 11 hours race for approximately 140 km distance at 9 pm. (source: Syz Translémanque)
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Now, to come back on my performance: I was terrible in sailing up the lake and competitive coming back.
On the way up, it took me 14 hours.
I passed the buoy at Le Bouveret at 23 h 35. Then, I speeded up, took good decisions and 8:47 hours later, I arrived in Geneva.
That time and speed is comparable to the Surprise skipper ranked 21.
Main finding: Had I done a good job sailing up the lake, I would have reached about a rank of 20.
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Now, what happend while going up the lake? Let's have a look at the track and the wind.
There was Bise. In the morning, it was a weak wind with 7 to 10 kt. I had to beat the wind in the Petit Lac. With my speed between 4 and 6 kt, I lost about an hour to the best ones until Yvoire, that is where the Petit Lac ends and the Grand lac starts, the wide-open lake.
At that point, I changed to close hauled on starboard side and stayed with it until South of Lausanne. I was among the last ones. And I asked myself why.
Some experienced regatta sailors told me later, it's because I did not clean the hull before the race. (Actually, I did clean the hull together with Thierry B, but 2 months prior to the regatta and not just before it.)
Others said: You might did not trim the sails properly.
A third possible reason: The other boats stayed closer to the French side with a better lift due to the thermal breeze. Whereas I stayed closer to the Swiss side. True is that the fastest Surprise skipper stayed close to the French shore (see his track on Google Earth, boat name Kahlua).
My analysis to it: It might be a combination of all. Extra cleaning: + 0.5 kt, better sail trim +0.5 kt, better winds, +0.5 kt. All this little details might add up to an extra speed of 1.5 kt. That is what makes a experienced skipper to a winning one.
But prove me wrong: I stayed on the Swiss side because I expected more exposure to the bise and some thermal lift from the Swiss shore lake breeze, since both effects are adding up. On the French side, these Bise and the thermal breeze might cancel out each other. However. At this point, I was still okay.
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Here comes the main reason for being 14 hours on my way to Le Bouveret: I had three wind holes.
These three wind holes (below marked 1, 2 and 3) took me five hours of racing time.
The yellow line means the recorded track.
The red circles mean the wind holes on the way up the lake: 1, 2 and 3.
The blue circle means the wind holes on the way back: 4 and 5.
The violet section means: Sailing under big spinnaker (= big baloon sail) on the way back from Yvoire to Bellevue.
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The main mistake: Going up the lake, I did not stick with my
wind/track-strategy. That strategy was: Sail a longer distance, but stay close to the Swiss shore
alongside Morges, Lausanne, Pully, Lavaux and Vevey. My weather analysis was: There will be good wind along the whole shore.
What I did in reality, is to sail in the middle of the lake where the winds from the opposite sides do cancel each other out. That was the cause for the wind holes 1, 2 and 3.
In this situation, stuck in the middle of the lake, you have these thoughts like: What a great invention is to have an engine! Or: Why am I doing this!?
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Siren wind: After twice a hour of desperate waiting S of Lausanne, all of sudden a strong wind came like a mythical Siren. It brought me an hour or more of high speed (6 to 7 kt) towards Le Bouveret. I was so happy that I forgot about my strategy and let myself seduce by that Siren, hoping that it would bring me all the way to the buoy.
But No. It spilled me out in front of the big mountain (Le Grammont) near St. Gingolph and there, I got stuck, with other sailors, for full 3 hours. I could nothing else do than sit and wait. What a frustration.
Even worse: The nearby wind down the Lavaux, produced waves that arrived to me as a swell and jerked around Mama Mia. It made the sails flap like hell. It was a nightmare.
From 7 to 10 pm, I could nothing else do but keeping the boat ready for the next wind I expected from behind. Why? The wind model forecast showed me a light wind shift from North to West at this spot, a sort of deviated Bise deflected by the Grammont from South to the East direction. It finally happend.
Caption:
Wind hole 3: The Bise from Lavaux (long blue lines top down) stops in front of the Grammont (circle 3, Southern shore) because of the mountain wind (short blue lines downside up). The blue dotted zone is the wind hole.
While waiting, you observe competitors, what they do. You find their names on the Suivi-app. One girl, not far from me, was on a Dyas (small as a Yngling). Special was that she had a assisting motorboat close to her the whole time. I found her name and googled her. She did that race for the 19th time (!) for the purpose of fundraising money for children with cancer. I thought she was a brave sailor, since she had a much smaller boat than me and had to bear 23:58 hours of race (her name is Marie-Laure Pralong). In compensated time, she was 105, just behind me.
Another competitor, on a bigger boat than a Surprise called N'fun 30, almost crashed into me in the darkness. He finally made it on rank 107 compensated time.
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Then the kick: I reached the buoy. Friends and my girlfriend were sending me pictures from a party, and I was alone on the lake sailing at midnight. Now, I told to myself: You stick to your strategy!
At Le Bouveret I turned Northwest in direction of Vevey and I got a wonderful Bise of 16 to 19 kt (blue arrows top down) on close hauled.
I expected two more wind holes of half an hour each due to the landscape. The Lavaux blocks the Bise at two spots (marked dotted between thick blue lines), one South of Chexbres and one between Pully and Lutry.
1 am: The wind was violent but mind-refreshing. It felt like a liberation. Now, I had the flow of a regatta sailor. In two hours, I would make it to South of Lausanne.
Caption:
Yellow line: Track back to Geneva, close to the Swiss coast between Vevey and Lausanne.
Blue arrows: Wind direction
Dotted corridors: Wind holes South of Chexbres and Lutry.
Violet line: Bearing 249-degree strait to Yvoire after passing Lausanne.
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3 am: The Bise was still strong, even stronger than before. I turned in direction of Nyon, still far away. It was so dark, I could not recognise the shore. The 249-degree-bearing got burned into my memory. "Keep it tight", I told myself fighting the sleepiness, wind and waves. I calculated: In 2-3 hours, I would be close to Yvoire and entering the Petit lac. The waves grew bigger and bigger.
Sailing without moonlight meant I had to navigate with the compass and a bearing (= direction).
The problem of YCC boat Mama Mia: The compass has no light. So, I used the Velocitek (the small white rectangular device attached on the mast under the boom) to get the heading (= where the boat heads to) and the GPS-speed (= the real speed).
Once, having the accurate heading, I fixed on a shorelight with the eyes and steered towards it (on the picture above: the orange light on the horizon). I did that for almost three hours.
I stood the whole time on that metal stirrup that a Surpise has, holding the tiller and the main sheet. I had to release it many times to recude the power when gusts hit the boat. That kept me tuned while being sleepy.
A unfortune detail: this Velocitek device does not have a digital screen light. In order to see the screen, I had to light up my head lamp. Using the bright light, made me blind to the elements for a couple of seconds. That was not pleasant at all (and should be being improved by the next Translèm skipper).
Picture: I was wearing a life vest, attached with a life line to the reeling. I carried two jackets and a head cover to prevent from hypothermia with the Bise of 5 beaufort.
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6 am. The final run was glorious. Passing Nernier in the direction to Geneva, it is dawning. I hoisted the big spinnaker. It worked like a turbo on a car: The speed increased from 4 kt to 6.5 - 7.5 kt. All competitors stayed close to the French coast, but I sailed down on the Swiss side, passed Port Choiseul at about 7:30 am, and reached the finishing line at 8:12.
Why did I host the spi? I felt ashamed from being almost the last one. I told myself: Pull yourself together, take the risk (with 10 kt to 14 kt of wind), bring up the big spi (on your own) and pass your last competitors. It went well. I overtook three boats in two hours.
That's why I
did not become the last one in the race.
I did goosewinging for almost 2 hours. Means, one sail to the left and one to the right side on a running course (= wind exactly from behind). There is a very t amight angle you can goosewing without jamming or gybing, in particular with a wind stronger than 10 kt. The helmsman has to be extremely concentrated. That, I managed after 20 hours of sailing.
Pictures: Goosewinging or butterfly sailing: Main sail and spi on either side. Taking such a photo was a risk, since the moments you use your hands for holding the camera, the boat could gybe accidentally.
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8:12 am, the arrival. The race officer horned when crossing the line. There was a very light wind coming from the hill of Cologny. I could not enter the Port Noir under sail. The engine was stored in the cabin. Happily, I remembered the position of a blue buoy in front of the Geneve plage restaurant.
Like a good examinee, I stopped at the buoy, attached the boat and did the derigging on water. Main sail down, foresail down, role, fold and store the sails, prepare the mooring lines, lift the 30 kg outboard engine out of the cabin, carry it to the stern and lift in its rail.
Then, I under engine, I entered the port and moored at a visitor's place.
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My back hurt, my neck hurt, my legs hurt, everything hurt.
But I looked happy. I called my girlfriend, reporting her that I am alive and asked her to pick me up. I let my helper, Ycc skipper Krzysztof, know where the boat was moored. He accepted to sail back to Versoix in the afternoon. And then, I had breakfast.
Picture: The skipper selfie after the race.
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And the autohelm, was it useful? Good question. I could only use it upwind with moderate wind for about five hours out of 22 hours race time. That is not very much. With light winds of 1 to 3 kt, it does not work properly. With stronger wind (12 kt or more), this model acquired by YCC (a "Raymarine 1000") is too weak to work properly. Also, it does not anticipate the waves if sailing beam, broad reach or running. Proficient autohelms calculate the wave frequency and compensate the surfing movement of the waves.
Nevertheless, in strong wind, the autohelm was helpful for a bio break, for drinking, changing cloth, changing the body position, rigging the spi, checking the mobile phone for navigation and weather analysis and for adjusting the foresail.
There were moments, I had to kneel down in the cockpit a couple of minutes to relax my legs. I could not use the autohelm for a micro nap as I thought I could do.
Electricity: The solar panel worked very well. The (weak YCC) battery was charged all the way and I could use the autohelm during the whole trip and the position lights at night.
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A big surprise: On Saturday morning, at around 11 am, all of sudden, the President and the Secretary of the YCC appeared next to Mama Mia on their motor boat and took video footage and pictures of me:
Pictures: Mama Mia while racing. (source: Alberto P.)
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Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble with the position device provided by the race committee.
It is called MySuiviRegate. It's an app that is connected to a homepage called SuiviRegate.
Picture: The screen of the MySuivi-app on a second mobile phone I took with.
The app was on, but it did not show me on the race map for half of the time. That was a real hassle to my followers and to me, too, because the race rules emphasise that you can be excluded from the race if your app is not on.
Furthermore, that malfunction was potentially dangerous at night, since: If I had fallen off board, the rescue boats from the race committee would not have found me. There were two rescue boats behind us at all the time. I did not see them at night, but I saw them on the Suivi-app. And I knew only later that they were worried all the time, since I was on and off screen.
Screenshot: Miraculously, Mama Mia appeared like a sperm on the screen on Saturday 14:17.
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There was a second photo shooting. This time the racing committee visited me South of Cully. A big boat came and took video footage and took professional pictures.
Pictures: Mama Mia and her skipper during the race. (Source: Syz Translémanique)
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The conclusions: I was well prepared. I did a bad tactical decision not to stay close to the Swiss shore while going up the lake. I let myself seduce by a wind South of Pully (VD) that carried me into a terrible wind hole close to the French shore.
I did well one the way back. I was very competitive.
On the way back, it was a wild ride on Mama Mia, rodeo-like, with 16-18 kt of wind with the genua and main sail open. The boat heeled sometimes strongly. I had to concentrate extremely for many hours to keep it on track.
There was a poor chance to reef (= decrease the sail area) in a situation when the wind increases within 120 seconds from 0 to 16 kt. At night, to reef or change the genoa for a jib, on your own, with steep waves on a 6-meter boat, with bf 5 and no moon light, is an adventurous thing. I tried to come around for safety reasons. Either one has to reef before, but reefing before the strong wind arrives, means reefing with 1 to 3 kt. That is not an option either. No racer does set a reef or change the foresail with 3 kt. I expected the wind not to be stronger than 18 kt. That's why I did not reef or change for a smaller jib. The situation confirmed my assumption.
I arrived well. The boat had no damage, Mama Mia took care of me. I was exhausted but happy.
Picture: The finishing buoy at Port Noir at 8.12 in the morning.
