First sail on Sanya Lan!

So a busy period, particularly for the shore team that has been here much longer than the sailors, finally led to the launch of the boat, a full-team barbecue at the dock, and the first two days of sailing.

In my area, Rachel Howe has been doing a great job to get the electrics and electronics up running, both in the navigation area with computer and instrument system and on the canting keel control system. Rachel is our ‘sparky’, which means that she works very close with me to make and maintain the navigation systems. Or, as I will be sailing most of the time, have to do a couple of hours in the gym in the mornings and do my small projects to get ready for the race, she is actually doing 95% of it. And being a racing navigator herself, she will also do some of the performance analysis, participate in calibrating instruments etc. An interesting job!

She has, as most of the shore crew, put in very long days for a long time, so probably looking forward to us going away for a few days to sail the Fastnet Race from Sunday on. But until then, all is on to get the boat ready for the race.

We sailed the boat for the first time yesterday, in a bit more breeze than ideal for a test ride with 23-30 knots. So took it pretty easy and spent a while to test the technical systems before we sailed up and down the river to Southampton for a couple of hours while adjusting keel hydraulics and discovering small things that needed changing.

Today however, conditions were great with 15 knots increasing to 23+ meaning we could go out in the Solent and have a look at most of our new sails, which looked good and very interesting! Have a look at the photos! Had time to enjoy it all and keep an eye on how the deck systems work – including making an override at one occasion. Rachel staying below deck to look after the systems while the legendary navigator Mike Quilter who is our “weather man” came out sailing and could cover my crew role while I navigated, calibrated and trial-run the data logging systems.

Tomorrow we’ll go for an overnighter as a qualifier for the Fastnet, and to get hours in the boat. Quite quick progress!