On May 6th I had the chance to sail the Great Vallejo Race. I sailed this race on a Diam 24. This boat is a 24 feet trimaran, that is just one of the fastest boat I have ever sailed. It is the one design boat for the Tour de France à la voile. The boat accelerates very quickly and is very wet. The Diam 24 is a boat set up for three people to race and probably more to sail for pleasure. I was sailing the boat with Fred Bouju the owner and skipper, he is also the person that got my Mom and I to test his Open 5.70 just before buying ours in 2014. My Dad was on-board as well and sails quite often with Fred on the Diam. Fred is promoting the Diam24 in the Bay: I heard that another one is coming soon an hopefully there will be a formal class by the end of the year! Contact Fred at (510) 512-8366 if you are interested :-)
The conditions varied a lot: at first we had a good 15 knots which was very fun. Later on the wind died to around 3-4 knots, where we had a slower boat speed than the rest of the fleet. Towards the end of the race the wind picked up around 15 knots again which was again very fun.
While sailing this boat there are a couple of things that I loved doing. First every time we gybed with a good boat speed, we could feel a force pushing against you when you crossed the boat. This amazed me very much as I know the America's Cup sailors feel this too but of course with a stronger intensity. Second when we were coming back upwind I was able to steer the boat most of the way back which was very fun. The boat is very fast upwind: we reached around 15 knots of speed in 10-15 knots of wind.
Overall, I had a great time sailing from Richmond all the way to Vallejo, this was very exciting. I hope to be able to sail this boat again. Thank you Fred for inviting us to sail.
Here is a short video
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