Anna Corbella and the "Base Mini Barcelona" using SQUID

We just finished the first edition of the Ocean Sailing Course, organized by the Base Mini Barcelona, a training center which helps ocean skippers of class Mini 6,50 in their path to the Minitransat.

 

This course, first step for our trainees, gives the opportunity to people who are attracted by Mini 6,50's or blue water sailing, to learn a little bit more about offshore sailing, and to approach long navigations with sufficient confidence.

 

Originally the course was scheduled at the end of January. In Barcelona we have good weather in winter (enough to sail all day and maybe stay one night at sea). But the weather situation was really bad this time, strong winds from the NE generating one of the worst gales of the last years. We had waves of 8m high in the coast of Barcelona, many ports were damaged…! We followed the evolution with Squid the week before, and we could see clearly that we should postpone the course.

 

3 weeks later, the weather was just perfect. We started the route from Roses (north of Barcelona). The boat was a Pogo30, ideal for that kind of courses (pretty much like a big and confortable Mini 6,50), the teachers were 2 experienced ocean sailors (Albert Bargues and Anna Corbella) and the training skippers were 3 people with some experience in sailing.

 

The course began with a huge weather pattern analysis with Squid. We analysed the charts, gribs, and decided for the route. We used the Pogo 30 polars to create a route averaging 36h of navigation, rich in its variability, including some upwind, downwind, tricky areas with currents to manage in Cabo de Creus, even some squalls… we had absolutely all conditions! This was a good experience also to play with Squid and the people on the course were surprised about how accurate a forecast can be!

 

We know that weather in the Med is difficult to predict, but with Squid life became easier on board! You can plan all conditions, just very practical and straightforward when you need different conditions to explain different situations on a course.