The (Volvo) Suursaari Race (a.k.a. Espoo suursaari Race) is the largest off-shore sailing race in Finland. 2007 was the 17. time the race was held, with some 200 boats in 8 different handicaps (LYS, IMS, open)

Vedette ran in the LYS2 group. Vedette's handicap is 1.25, but as we had a gennaker instead of a spinnaker the handicap proved to be far too high for us. We finished 16th out of 22 boats (out of which 1 was disqualified and 2 did not finish).

The first leg was a complete disaster for us: it took us 17h 40min to get to Kotka gate (last by a wide margin, 3½ hours after the first boat). The wind (when there was any) was directly from back, and the gennaker just did not work.

The second leg was a dream: first to Suursaari with the gennaker with the wind coming from side, then around the island with just a single tack - probably those who came in earlier had less wind and had to tack more. It turns out we were the fastest boat in real time (not corrected time) - we spent 5h10min on this leg.

The last leg back was OK: first endless tacking through the night, then wind turned to the side (pretty good with the gennaker) and last couple miles with the wind on our back (another disaster with the gennaker, especially in the narrows leading to the finish line). The long night was 14 hours 6 minuntes (real time).