Here we are again, Marie G and Yours truely.

After the very good performance in Askøy, it was time for a dip in Cold water. The 21st of June, it was the Ryfylke rundt, a 55 mile nightsail around the Ryfylke arcepelago. The Wind was a steady partner this time, the race was done in less than 9 hours. It was a Nice excursion, but the results was not very good. Of the 3 shorthanded boats, I was beated by 28minutes by the winner and 4 minutes by the second. All Things considered, not too bad.

Next race was the Stavanger seilasen the 23rd of August.

All went well until I aimed for the wrong turning mark. Sailing back set me back 10 minutes. without that excursion; I would have had a Nice midfield finish. Lesson: Read the sailing description, Make notes on the map!

Next race was a race for singlehandlers only: The Henry Lloyd singlehanded the 6th of September. It turned out to be a windless race. The start was good, With 6knots Wind from behind, and I had a brilliant start, but then the Wind died. The current ran along With us in 1 knot and took us all towards the first rounding mark. We got one hour of sailing, With 6 knots breeze from behind, far too little to sailaway from the slow boats, but I managed a 2nd Place from 14 boats sailing without spinnakers. (Quite the same findings as in PBO).

September 27th and 28th was singlehand/ shorthand weekend in Stavanger.Only 3boats in singlehanded class, and 19 doublehanded boats. I won the race on saturday, and took 2nd Place on the sail back on sunday wich made me the winner of the weekend. What impressed me the most, was that I could keep up fairly good With the Bermuda rigged boats in the headwind (20 knots) on sunday. The biggest problem was that the sheetingforces pulled the sail aft on the mast! I started wondering about putting parrels to keep the sail forward on the mast. I will have to think about making a traveller to shift the point of sheeting to the Windward side for Next years races.

2014has been a good year for my racing, even on my motorcycle. I won the Scandinavian cup in my class,and can drive With number 1 on my motorcycle NeXT year, not bad for an old fart.

Mark Thomasson wrote:

Quite a mover! 

Out of interest: What speed?  How close to the wind?

 

cheers

Mark 

I had no instruments on board apart from a compass, so I can't tell, but we were just a few degrees off from fully close-hauled, I guess. Maybe Ketil can fill in with some numbers here.

Arne

Graham Cox wrote:

 

Thanks for that video clip Arne.  Watching Marie G creaming along in such a light breeze is amazing!  I have copied it to my hard drive so I can drool over it.  If I could choose another boat it would be a light displacement flyer for sure.  Arion might be almost indestructible, which is comforting in a Tasman gale but plenty of light displacement boats have made ocean passages.  I'd like to see a boat like Marie G in the OSTAR!

When thinking of it, Frøken Sørensen must also have moved well for her size as we were not complete sitting ducks side by side Marie G (maybe 0.5 - 0.75kts slower).

The key parameters of Marie G; LOA=10m, Disp=2800kg and SA=55sqm say something. No surprise that she moves along well and even does well in races...

Arne

I haven't seen any video clips of Marie G, yet, so when I was out in Frøken Sørensen today, I took this little video as she was creeping up alongside us (Wind F3+, I guess). I haven't bothered with uploading it to Youtube  -  it is only 13seconds (19MB), so I just give you a link to the file, stored on my Dropbox:

Enjoy!

Arne 

PS: You get higher resolution if you download the file to your computer and then play it.

Well, here I am again With reports from the 2 last races With wildly different results. The first one was around Arsgrunnen, a shallow in the Boknafjord. The race is attractive because one can choose different routes to get there. To make a long and boring story short,I took the wrong routeand ended up sailing forever. Ended up dead last With a good margin.

The other race was a dedicated single handed race outside Bergen, at Askøy seilforening. The race started With light Wind from the rear, but died away With a draft from behind. Marie G loves draft from behind, and drifted slowly away from the rest of the yachts. I got a 300 meters headstart when the Wind picked up, now from the North, wich meant headwind. Some of the competitors closed in on the beat towards the roundingmark. I rounded the mark as boat number 3 of 6, first of the 2 no spinnaker boats. The Wind picked up as we ran for the start line to make another beat up to a rounding point. By now the Wind had increased to 18 knots, and Marie G really flew against the Wind, Not loosing out to the 2 boats Ahead of me. On the run to the finishing line, Marie G overtook the First 31,7 that won the "With spinnaker" class. He choose not to use the spinnaker on the last leg. Marie G ended up as the winner of the non spinnaker class, and With best finishingtime of both classes. There are tracking of the race at the Facebook page of Seilmagasinet. no. You can speed it up, not having to sit and watch for 8 hours and 55 minutes.

It was a highly enjoyable weekend, With lots of interest in the strange blue sail.