Sailonline congratulates Laiska for her second (!) race victory in a large online fleet race! Read her story.

I started the race quite confident that this time, the race being on the other side of the globe, WeatherTech would not be able to create any sophisticated voodoo-forecasts, and thus UGRIB would match game weather well, like in the Fastnet. So, my strategy was simple: I would just follow the route created by Deckman as closely as possible.

At the beginning this seemed to lead less than perfect VMC/VMG - this was perhaps due to the fact that I still had the 60 feet multihull polars loaded in the system - quite embarracing. This was soon sorted out, and I was able to climb the leaderboard to 2nd, nest to JerryM. The first night I set the boat on starboard tack to CC 155 - this would lead me to the point where DfW recommended I would make the tack to BB early next morning. The course would involve sailing to TWA 55-60 on a beat. I must say I was little upset in the morning, when I saw how much almost everyone else had gained by sailing best VMG (position now dropped to perhaps somewhere in the 30-es). I guess Tango had a similar plan here, as he emerged now on my lee bow.

The fact that the game weather didn't show the UGRIB weather 180 wind carousel for the next day, didn't make my morning any easier... Well, I studied the situation little closer, and when the UTC 0715 weather update matched almost exactly the earlier UGRIB weather I had routed according to, I could feel quite safe the tack I had made would take me to the top.

There were lots of boats close to the shore&rhumb, almost all ahead of me in the leaderboard at this time. The forecast showed however that these boats would hit a "wall" noon UTC, and that was exactly what happened (some said I had luck with weather here, but it just went exactly as planned - the "wall" was clearly visible in the forecasts). The geometry also worked to my favour also against JerryM, Tango was right behind, but following nicely, so I had an enjoyable day leading the pack, and a perfect plan for the rest of the race. The only critical manouver left - the last jibe - was mastered before the evening sauna bath. The night would be spent reaching in increasing winds. The "bumbs" in the polars meant however that there still was room for some tricks for JerryM & Tango to try. So I had to set the alarm clock to wake me up circa UTC 0300 to check the opposition - just in time to enjoy the 20.6 kn top speed! You see, I had planned some tricks of my own for the night...

So, the last night went well, I think I gained some miles on JerryM, and the first rounding was perfectly timed to be executed after the breakfast, Finnish time. The rest of the race would however be a beat up to the Derwent River, so the day would be divided to 1 hour "watches" between tacks. As I approached the last tack @ Fort Direction the euforia crept too far, too soon, and I almost stuck disaster: Betsey Island was rendered so small on the game map that I overlooked it completely. Fortunately my father-in-law happened to be reading the chat exactly in the right moment, and noticed the warning JerryM had kindly sent me, so I escaped without a hitch. An intresting detail here is, that I managed a 14 min win over JerryM, and had an hour to go at this point (10 nm @ 10 kn), so perhaps I had been able to afford even to run on ground... but it certainly would have been close!

All in all, the race was, from my point of view, an another great showcase on the power of grib-routing. I really do not understand how JerryM & Tango were able to figure all the calm areas & windshifts so well without any sofware!