Spreading our Wings...

Hey all! Yet some more good news from the Team Invictus camp... What a weekend again for us! A very good start to 2010 indeed! (photos & videos coming soon;-)

Whilst the "big boys" in Valencia were wondering what colour knickers to wear for the big day and whether the "Swiss Made" stickers on Alinghi 5 were actually made in Switzerland or not, we took Invictus down to Weymouth for our first shake-down sail of 2010, with the support of Paul and Helena, our friends from Vestas Sailrocket.

We have recently move away from Cardiff as the bay was getting too small four our C-Class to stretch its legs comfortably... Weymouth offers the kind of space that we need and with the Olympics sailing being hosting there, the facilities have been developed quite a lot, so we're likely to be frequent visitors there. If you are interested in coming to see us, let us know and we will keep you posted of our next appearance there.

A quick and painless rigging process started the day on Saturday morning. A bit of waiting around for the weather to settle a bit and Invictus was finally off on the water with Paul and Gordon on board. As our most likely racing crew, we need to give them as much time as possible together on the water. Aim of the session was mainly to test the latest mods and repairs to ensure the wing is reaching maturity and can be pushed to its full potential.

Saturday breeze was around 12 to 14kts most of the day which was ideal for us to experiment. We managed to push the wing further than before with no major drama. The boys had a lot of fun out there, including flying close and personal with the pontoons in the marina! Nice one guys but don't do it again;-) A quick "pit-stop" was needed in the afternoon to solve a couple issues but nothing serious, also proving that the shore team is becoming more efficient. On Sunday the breeze had calmed down quite a lot, around 5 to 6kts to start with, which allowed the guys to practice trapezing on the leeward side and in front of the beam "a la Steve Clark"... The afternoon was a bit breezier, up to 10 or 11kts.

During this weekend sailing we managed some friendly racing against a local moth and Paul's A-Class, just to start getting an idea of performance. Overall it seems that we are achieving good results upwind, both the moth and the A-Class being convincingly left behind. On the other hand, we are still struggling downwind, where we could only just about keep up. This clearly shows we still have a lot of work to do.

In summary, we bring back a lot from this weekend. We feel we have spread our wings properly for the first time and we have achieved a major step forward in terms of reliability and performance. The guys really feel they can concentrate on the sailing rather than worry about not breaking the wing! We have an idea of where we are going and what we need to work on. This will help us prioritise the job list for the next few weeks.

The boat is looking in good shape and showed some promising performance so thumbs up to all the team for the hard work over the past few weeks! It's starting to pay off and it is a great feeling!

Go Team!

Cheers,

Juls.