As a Baghdad member I, Johan Barne, has been working on his new 505. A nice all-carbon boat from Rondar boats. At last it was time to sail with the new boat in early October. After months of sporadic work on the boat and an intersive push in the last week, I got the boat finished in time for this weekend’s races in Kullavik. District Championships with 8 boats (and a Dane!).

Well, I don’t know about “finished”. When it was time for the first start, we were out there on the water with sails hoisted. However, there were several rig settings that were completely wrong and the mast rake were well to far forward. The boom pointed tot the sky as if we were sailing Snipe. We decided to scrap the first race, re-tie some rig Control lines and get the rig set up alright.

Eventually, we were able to get the rig reasonably set up and could join the fleet for the 2nd race. The boat felt great ever though we still couldn´t rake the mast as much as we would have wanted. We sailed just outside the harbour in Kullavik. Outer loop course and really shifty and tricky. In the 2 following races everything went smoothly and we won both of these races.

In the last race we once again sailed a solid race and led on the first lap. In the end of the first run I managed to rip the whole fitting for deploying the spinnacker pole off the mast. No other solution than to keep that line tight in one hand and the spinnacker sheet in the other. When rounding up it got a little bit messy and there was no comfort in that the kicking strap broke!

No shadow should fall on the great deck hardware we have got from Seldén. It has been hard to predict how everything should be dimensioned beforehand and in some cases I sure have been a little bit too optimistic. Additional to that some systems were temporary and such stuff usually become weak by design.

Well, after some considering we decided to continue as we were. We lost the lead to Söderström/Calvert but after some breaks with our tactics we regain a narrow lead at the last top mark. To add to the joy, we were able to pick up a nice puff and extend further. This in spite of the fact that my hands were full by control lines and having Oscar hanging in the boom now when we did not have a vang.

…so we managed to hold on to the lead and subsequently win the District Championships with the series DNC-1-1-1.

However, the greatest victory was to eventually get the boat ship-shape and on the water. The stuff that broke (by my design) aside, the other systems worked great. To have a boom and spin poles in carbon fibre felt really exclusive and the smart deployment system with one single line to deploy the pole and spinnacker guy worked really well. All this stuff came from Seldén Mast who have helped us in a great way.

We also got a chance to try our new North Sails. The main in 3DL looks so great so it makes our eyes water. Incredible that they have been able to get such a nice shape into such a small sail.

Now we only have to fix the problems we discovered by sailing in real!