Pornichet Select 2014 – Part 1/2
It’s almost two weeks now since I finished the Pornichet Select 6.50 2014 – my first race of the year.
The week before the race was pretty relaxed so I reserved the entire friday (day before the start) to prepare my navigation and to compile a roadbook with all the relevant information about the course.
Early start on saturday then with a final briefing and weather report, handing in the mobile phone and we were already being towed out of the marina.
I spent the two hours before the start of the race with calibrating the apparent wind angle, preparing the big spinnaker and eating something. We also had to change the satellite tracker on my boat as the previous one was not working.
10 minutes before the start the wind died down completely and with a bit of delay we were sent off in a downwind start. I was starting in the first line and while sailing the course along the beach I was in the top 10.
After leaving the bay of Pornichet (La Baule) we started tacking our way up the coast to west when my autopilot started behaving a bit weird tacking by itself. It turned out that my boatspeed sensor was broken and was delivering more or less random values between -12 and +20 knots of boatspeed. When the values were negative the pilot tried to be smart and turn the rudder the other way around which didn’t really help.
After a couple of hours of rock-hopping along the coast we now had to head offshore towards Belle Île and I decided to go neither with the first group nor the second group but to go on my own which didn’t pay.
In the channel between Île de Quiberon and Belle Île I didn’t do too well then. I was on the wrong side of the clocking wind and while trying to fix my pilot lost quite a bit of places.
After rounding the Birvideaux lighthouse north of Belle Île we made our way south.
Since the wind was coming right from behind we gybed our way into the night, me steering by hand all the time getting tired and hungry.
At about 2:30 am on sunday the wind angle was getting too hot for the big spinnaker and I had to change to the Code 5.
Dousing the big kite in increasing winds is not much fun but without a proper pilot this was becoming pretty annoying.
For the n-th time I went through all the configuration settings of my NKE system and finally found the option to switch the pilot to use the speed reported by the GPS instead of the boat speed sensor. That didn’t fix the pilot altogether but at least I now had a pilot that was steering fairly well going upwind and reaching.
The sail change and electronics had cost me 2 miles on the boats ahead of me but now I finally had the right sail up and was going in the right direction with about 6 knots. “Could be worse…” I thought and took a couple of naps to get the spirits back up…
to be continued…
Pornichet Select 6.50 2014: start today at 1pm
After three busy days of preparations we finally start today.
Ahead are 300nm of relatively light winds with some nice reaching in the mix.
Before heading out to sea we will sail along the beach of Pornichet and considering the amount of posters that you find all around town I assume we’ll have some audience.
If you want to follow the race you can do that here: http://www.ecoledevoilecnbpp.fr/pornichet-select-6-50-course-en-direct
I’m number 732.
Race introduction: Pornichet Select 6.50
The first race for me this season will be the Pornichet Select 6.50 which is organized by CNBPP in Pornichet La Baule.
With roughly three weeks until the start on April 12th at 1pm here’s a quick intro to the race to warm you up.
After the start in the bay of Pornichet we turn right and face northwest. No time to relay though, the first decision has to be made: do we stay in the “channel” between Belle Île and Quiberon/Hoedic/Houat or do we stay between Quiberon/Hoedic/Houat to avoid possible oncoming current and choppy waves.
We then make our way towards Birvideaux lighthouse which stands alone on a shallow north of Belle-Île and round it in the first night to start our way south.
Time for our next decision: Belle-Île is known for creating zones of light winds both on windward and leeward of the island, especially in the morning hours. So do we stick with the pack and take the direct route or do we go offshore and try to avoid the possible calm?
In any case, seeing Belle-Île at night with the lights of our 60-ish competitors will be a spectacular sigh.
The morning of the second day it’s time to focus a bit because the shipping lanes towards Nantes pass between Belle-Île and Île d’Yeu so we better keep our eyes open and the AIS on. Ideally around lunchtime the second day we will leave Île d’Yeu to our left and head to Les Sables d’Olonne. In 2013 this was a drag race dead downwind.
In front of Les Sables d’Olonne we now round the cardinal buoy “Nouche Sud”, then turn our back on Les Sables make our way back towards Île d’Yeu which we will leave to our right during the second night.
During dusk or the morning hours we are facing Belle Île again (remember the calms?) but this time we have the choice whether we want to pass to the east or the west of it so we should consider the currents which way to go.
While Belle-Île disappears behind us we make our way north towards Île de Groix which is located outside of Lorient so an area that most mini-ists know fairly well. We probably arrive during the third night and make our way up the westerly coast which is not very populated so the high cliffs remain dark and only the lighthouse Pen Men looms above the northern tip of the island.
We round the northern tip and now make our way back south, the island on our right.
We now have to juggle three things:
– the island is fairly high hence creates calm in its lee so it can make sense to head towards land for better wind
– the currents are fairly strong so if there’s wind at the island it may make sense to do bayhopping and stay close to the island to avoid current
– close to the island there are a lot of fishtraps, nets and submerged rocks
So we better make sure we are fresh and focused for this part of the race.
We leave Île de Groix behind us and proceed south towards Île de Quiberon and Belle Île, probably during the night. Depending on the tides we now have to decide again: stay in the channel or seek cover in between Quiberon/Houat/Hoedic and the land.
Now there’s only one shallow to round before we make our back into the bay of Pornichet to finish.
Well done, we just finished our 300nm solo race!
The main challenges of this race for me are the length (too long to stay awake, too short to allow yourself to sleep and be able to catch up), the temperatures (especially at night it’s still very cold) and the many tactical decisions on currents and winds around the many islands.
No Transgascogne
Unhappily the big race I had planned for this year – the Transgascogne – is going to happen without me.
Too much work and too many commitments make it hard to squeeze in the race itself, let alone preparation or even the delivery.
So even though I’ve wanted to do this race for years I’d rather do it another time with time for proper preparation.
This also means that my racing for this year is over.
Hopefully in return I will have some more time this autumn for some extensive training.