Dear all,
Another news letter in English that hopefully answers lots of questions we received from many of you!
The Race / the divisions / the handicaps We receive many questions about the race and how the rankings actually work. The ARC is transatlantic rally from Las Palmas to St Lucia – with a straight distance of 2700 miles. It is sailed in 5 divisions.
In total 231 boats participate in 5 different divisions.
Division I Cruising - 120 boats Division II RORC IRC Racing – 20 boats Division III RORC IRC Racing – 34 boats Division IV Multihulls –28 boats Division V Open – 11 boats Division VII Invitation Cruising - 18 boats
The boats in each division are more or less comparable in type and length.
Hassebas participates in the invitation cruising division with 18 other boats all with a length of 19 to 22 meter.
Handicap system. Since all boats are different in length, width, weight they are capable of reaching different speeds. Some boats are faster than others. Like in golf, in sailing there is a system to give each boat a handicap rating so that different boats can compete to each other. This handicap is calculated according to an extremely difficult formula that reflects the speed of each boat under different course direction, wind strength etc. Obviously there is a lot of discussion about this system…..if we don’t win it is because of the handicap is too high…
In principle – on average this system should be fair. Hassebas has a high rating(1.369 versus the rest of our division 0.99 to 1.19). It means we have to sail about 20% faster than anyone else to be able to claim the first position. Reasons for this high handicap are that Hassebas is build in carbon, it has a bowspirit, PBO rigging and a lot of other features and systems that are penalized under the handicap system.So when we face very light weather orvery strong winds we could do well. On average wind (bft 4-5) and with wind from behind it is more difficult for us to be competitive under this system.
VMG (velocity made good) The shortest distance between A and B is a straight line. With sailing sometimes it makes sense not to sail straight but first sail from A to C and then from C to B because the sailing yachts sails faster at a different wind angle. The race to St. Lucia is all about VMG. The rankings are based on the distance between your boat and St. Lucia not on the number of miles sailed.
Since the wind is primarily blowing from the East (75-105) and St. Lucia is in the West (270 degrees) the straight line is 180 degrees while fastest speeds are realized at 145/150 degrees wind angle. Since the wind is shifting between (75-105) we have to try to find the most optimal angles to sail as straight as possible to St. Lucia while sailing a wind angle of about 145/150 degrees. Since the wind is changing all the time with a few degrees you see Hassebas on the fleet viewer making many gibes as an attempt to take advantage of the wind shifts.
We do not look at the handicap rating too much. We try to finish on line honors (first to arrive in St. Lucia) in our division (invitation cruising) and like to be with the first 10 boats that reach St. Lucia overall. Both targets are still possible although there are many boats still close to us (within 20-40 miles range).
Strategy of going south We have chosen the most southern route. This means we will probably sail something like 3.800 miles in total instead of the most northern route 2700 miles. At this moment we sailed already 2833 miles with still 640 straight to St. Lucia.
The southern route brought us to the so called trade winds. This is a fairly strong wind (20-26 knots) from eastern direction. This is the perfect wind for Hassebas and makes sailing her so exciting. We rather have a great sailing and fun than maybe a shorter route with less wind.A good reference is that the other Shipman 63 boat that did not go South now sails approx. 300nm behind us. So although we had a sow start in terms of VMG, it was the right decision to head South and to pick up the trade winds.
Overall we will have sailed 3600nm or approx. 6500 km when we arrive in St Lucia. This is a lot more than the so-called rump line but by doing this we believe we can finish with the first 10-15 boats in St Lucia this coming weekend (however taking our handicap into account, we will eventually get a lower ranking and have more boats ”in front of us”).
At Sea – Solve your problem
The weight of our boat is approx. 16 tonnes. This is similar to 30 Ynglings. In ideal circumstances, we sail with a main sail of 100m2and a Genaker of 348m2 (also 30 Ynglings). This means we can easily carpet your entire home with the total surface of these sails. When these sails start pushing this 16 tonnes boat with 15 knots or >27km/hr, you can imagine what kind of pressure these sails have to encounter. This results in some problems every couple of days. This happens to all boats that participate but those boats with higher speeds have a higher probability of risks. So how does this work:
At the Atlantic there is nobody you can call to fix your problems.Also for sure you don’t have all the necessary spare parts or the right tools. You have to be creative and find ways to solve the problem. This is also part of the fun because all crew members are working together to look for a solution. You are amazed how many problems get fixed, but this takes easily 3-6 hours and some problems can only be fixed with day light.
Some examples of issues we had to solve over the last days:
Genaker… Started to show some tears after many days of use. On top the sock/shute/condom that pulls down the genaker was damaged. When we pulled down the genaker some twisted Shute parts also damaged the sail. Then you have to unwind 348m2 of surface on your boat….. We were able to ”stich”it with duck tape. Due to the damaged genaker we could not use the sails in 3 nights now because each time we found out new tears again. This is sometimes frustrating and exhausting for the crew. Basically the ground we gained during the previous days, we lost again during these last 3 nights.
Winch… The self taling winch on star port side broke. This is in fact the most important winch to operate the big genaker. Not having a self taling winch means we would have to operate with one additional person. Hugo who created the problem in the first place also came with the original solution to solve it. Why don’t we change the winch in the front with the one in the back…Takes 2 hours to organize.
Code Zero We noticed some small wholes in the code zero. Today we will try to repair the inmense sail. The problem here is that the sail is 180m2 in size and to repair it we need to unroll it and we need a flat space to repair. If we unroll this huge sail we have a problem how to furl it again. We think we figured out a solution but will know by the end of the day whether it works or not (worked in the meantime…..which is great because our 2ndGenaker is now history and not repairable any more…completely torn apart on top). The code zero will now need to help us to arrive with the first 10-15 boats.
Statistics Hassebas Las Palmas - St Lucia
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