She passed the first storm …..Bora in the Adriatic Sea

It was the plan to sail from Croatia back to Slovenia …..the forecast was somehow 35 knots of wind, okay, I know – normally the reality looking a bit different. But we encountered an 30 hour trip in between 45 and 54 knots of wind. I never spent time in a dishwasher but it must be similar. You know the difference between let’s say 46 and 53 knots of wind is just unbelievable. The energy is double at 53 knots…the boat then really fights and you can feel how all the parts are groaning and how she is fighting against the elements. To make a long story short – Lifgun passed the test with top grades, some bruises yes but in general no problems and I swear to God – I was so happy to have all the sheltered spaces on this boat. It was a perfect observation spot inside and the hardtop was just great if you had to move outside. But let’s do first a list of the damages:

- Top part of the main sail blasted; we were sailing with the 3’th reef in and the load on the semi square top was just tremendous. Yes guys, it was the 3’th reef – and I’m proud that I insisted to integrate a 3’th reef against all the others ;-).

- J1 unfurled twice (at the top part) during that ride. It’s quite tricky to unfurl and refurl a J1 in 50 knots of wind, but we managed this. I had before the first unfurl action to think a bit about how to unfurl and furl the sail. Therefore, the top batten bag ripped of during my thinking phase…..(BTW finally I went almost downwind to solve this issue…which is not really fun…..)

- Then the soft shackle which attached the J2 on the self tacking track was a bit to weak and broke twice. The metal part at the clew was smashing around like hell and damaged a part of the sail.

Over all – we had 3 sails up and we damaged 3 sails -> 100 % success quote ……omg.

Now the pro’s :

- She never broached, she was sailing like on tracks

- I never felt insecure

- I was able to observe everything from inside

- The twin rudders are awesome

- She is nice girl with a very good behavior.

- The autopilot is strong enough

- OceanVolt is also working in heavy weather and is producing electricity

Next trip will be over Xmas…let’s try to drive a small round out in the Atlantic Ocean…I’ll keep you posted.