J/112E Wins Grand Prix du Crouesty

(Crouesty-Arzon, France)- Over the past weekend, the YC Crouesty de Arzon hosted their annual Grand Prix du Crouesty for both one-design and offshore classes.  Sailing in the IRC class was the brand new J/112E sport cruiser.  Here is the report from Fred Bouvier at J/Composites, a crew on-board the J/112E:

“This past weekend we were racing in Le Crouesty (Brittany / France). The weather forecast was predicting a light and sunny weekend. Our crew was our usual base along with new crew coming from friends and family.

We were in a decent fleet that had a wide cross-section of top French offshore teams.  In fact, we ended up racing in a combined IRC 1 and IRC 2 fleet start. In the end, this was a highly competitive fleet as all the podium winners in the offshore classes from famous Spi Ouest France were here. This would be a challenge for us as we would be sailing the J/112E in IRC 2 class, but we would be sailing in the turbulence of the bigger boats in our starting line.

The first day of racing was comprised of three W/L races.  We had a very successful day fighting the bigger boats; we had a record of 2-1-1 for our finishes! Perhaps what was most impressive about our performance is that we were racing in real-time with the back of IRC 1 fleet which included two new fast IRC 40 class prototypes, two Grand Soleil 43s and a Ker 39.

The following day we started with a coastal race due to light and shifty conditions. We had a terrible start, taking about 3 minutes to cross the line, but we came back nicely to catch back up to the leaders on corrected time during the race.  The best IRC 1 boats were able to extend their lead, but we were still under control on corrected time.

The second race was a windward-leeward course, which was great for us.  On the first windward leg in 8 knots of wind, we missed crossing ahead of the first IRC 1 class boat, the Ker 39 with an Olympic Medallist calling tactics, by just one boat-length!  In the end, we finished in real time in the middle of the fleet of IRC 1 with the IRC fleet 2 being half a leg behind!

This was a very nice week for our J/112E team, having a fun time in the evening with friends and a lot of fun on the water! Finally, racing with the middle of the IRC 1 fleet has been a great chance for us to test our performance!  This was element was unexpected, but it created an extra challenge that we were pleased to have successfully passed!  For more Grand Prix du Crouesty sailing information


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