Sunday, June 11, 2017

Nacra 15 sailing May 27th and 28th 2017 @ABYC

On the week-end of the 27th and 28th of May, I attended for the first time in my life a Nacra 15 regatta. I sailed with my friend Luke, who I met 2 years ago sailing Optis at SFYC.

On the first race, a part of the boat broke which caused us to retire. The part that broke was a simple bungee that was not strong enough. Speed is key to victory in all catamarans, and to achieve that, you need a team that has sailed for a long time together, which was not our case.

On the second day, our boat speed had improved and we were almost faster upwind than the competition. The first race, we had our spinnaker (front sail) that got caught in the front of the boat. After rounding the top mark, we tried to undo the knot but ended up flipping. Luckily, we still finished the race. The second race we were able to round the top mark second but ended up capsizing and losing our lead on third place. This capsize caused us to break the same bungee again. After fixing it we continued sailing. The following race, we did our best to keep up with the others, we were just as fast as them on the upwind but still a little slower downwind.

During this regatta, I learned how to improve my boat speed downwind. I also learned how to fly the windward hull upwind which I will use on my family's F16 Viper. I would like to thank Luke and Charles Froeb for taking care of me over this Memorial Day Weekend. A big thank you also to Erwan Griziaux (Charles' crew & a real great French F18 sailor) for all the tips on how to sail better and faster: this really helped Luke and I achieve a better boat speed.

I can not wait to sail with Luke again!


This is the trailer the Froeb use to bring the boats from San Francisco to LA and back!


 Luke and I after a stop at In-n-out:

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