Course des Iles
Hi First 30 fans,
Classic event of the Atlantic coast, the 17th edition of Course des Iles has been held by the Club Nautic Hoedicais the 5th to 10th of June.
This single handed competition raced by legs attracted 96 competitors spitted in two fleets, five coastal races were on the schedule including an overnight offshore stage (being the longest leg of all).
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The weather conditions gave a challenge to the competitors with various and complicated scenarios: gust up to 30 knots with rain as well as a 5 hours wind-less episode at sunrise during the long offshore race, which was granted with a coefficient 2. This wind-less episode cost dearly to high rated boats such as the Beneteau First 30 “Baton” of Philippe Massu, and took away from him the chance of winning the leg overall. Despite this bad luck, Philippe Massu showed once again his great single-handed skills, standing on the podium at three occasions, including one race-bullet in the last race. At the end of the event, while he was clearly happy with his result and the First 30 performance over the wide variety of conditions encountered, Philippe shared his regrets regarding his choice for the sail wardrobe due to his little experience on his newly launched boat. He concluded that for best performance, the First 30 needs to reduce the fore sail area very quickly, especially single handed, for the jibs as well as the spinnakers (heavy wind flat spinnaker and small Code 5 A-sail), in order to avoid to over-power the boat and to reduce heel angle.
Next event for Philippe is the “Duo Atlantique”, which will be run next week with a similar staged format but this time double handed.
We wish fair wind to Philippe and his crew.
| This entry was posted by Patrice Martin on 20 June 2011 at 7 h 26 min, and is filed under First 30. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
about 1 year ago
Congratulations for this big sucess !!!!