X-41 Wins the first race of the Spring Series

It is always an exciting task to sail a brand new design from X-Yachts in its first race.  With so much design and development on paper, the true test in performance is on the water against other yachts.  The X-41 arrived only days before the event and after 3 days and nights of hard work, we went out for our first practice on the Saturday before the race series began.  After practice we made some minor adjustments to the rig set up, and then got some much needed rest before racing.

The X-41, while conforming to a strict One Design ethos (as per the X-35), has been designed to take advantage of the IRC rating system thereby making the boat attractive in markets where getting the numbers required for One Design racing may be challenging, but it allows these owners to compete in One Design events/championships in the relevant countries should they wish to.

With designer and founder of X-Yachts, Niels Jeppesen, on board the crew were keen to show the capacities of the X-41.  With a good line up in the first race of the Warsash Spring Series we were facing the brand new Swan 42 and the custom Reighel/Pugh “Windsong”, both are strong IRC contenders.  The J-133 “Jammy Dodger” is also a very worthy opponent.

We had a short line up with the Swan 42 before the start and things looked promising.  We could easily hold on to her while she rates considerably higher.

We had a clean start on the Committee boat end but the unsteady southerly breeze of 9-12 knots played tricks on all of us.  We rounded the weather mark just behind the two higher rated boats, the Swan 42 and “Windsong”, after suffering a bit of a bad shift at the end of this first beat.  On the run we showed good speed and managed to hang on to them while we learned how to sail the boat better and better.

In the next subsequent beats and runs we managed to slowly wind these two in while fighting off “Jammy Dodger”.  On the 4th run we made our passing move and in a slightly dying breeze our performance stunned us all as we were pulling away upwind and downwind from these two which rate more then 60 points higher and owe us about 3.5 min per hour.

On the final reach to the finish our tactics to stay slightly high on a ridge of a pressure paid off and we finished with line honours 6 min ahead of the next boat and a 15 min lead on handicap.  You can imagine that we are extremely content with this result considering that we only sailed her for the first time on the previous day!