The ARC 2012 started on the water exactly at 11:00 AM for our group, where we decided to leave at the SB (inshore) end of the line. As you may expect from a group of racing sailors like us we had a nice position off the line with some space to leeward from a big Oyster and a bit in front of a X-512 from Italy.

The fleet had quite moved towards too the sea, while we decided to move along the coast with a shorter way. During the day and south from Gran Canaria the wind speeded up to 30-35 knots and our Xcc 50 was good to handle. Powerful conditions made us reducing the sail area while our Xc 50 Leewat was speeding more and more. We started a kind of speed record down the waves which started somewhere in the area of 15 knots. Within short time this benchmark was beaten by Nanno with a 18.2 knots top speed. Following this game Eugen took the record half an hour later by catching some nicee waves and pushed the fully loaded (and therefor almost 20t heavy) Leeway up to 19.1 knots! This still stands as the boat speed record (for now...).

But don’t worry, under all this fun we keep safety in mind and take a lot of care about our nice Xc 50.

 

Stay tuned.

 

Leeway crew