Glad to see a thread and Wellesley (and to a lesser extent Wellington) as I own both - although far more VWIAX than VWELX.
I bought (and made Wellesley the bedrock of my RE plan) because it historically has shown very stable 5-7% annual returns with low volatility - but so far this year, it's considerably more volatile than normal, being down ~2.48% as of close of market 3/1. That's not much in the grand scheme of things, but much more than I'd expect from my "sleep well at night" fund.
I suspect this is because VWIAX holds some pretty long bonds - and a fair amount of them. So, when rates rise - VWIAX gets hammered.
The other thing I worry about is the management changes - there have been a lot of new names in the past year, and M* performance over that time is not equal to performance numbers of the past.
Beginning to think I may not have made a wise choice making such a large commitment to Wellesley (and lesser extent Wellington), but it is my "tortoise and the hare" fund that I always thought would allow me to sleep well at night also. I did the same thing with BERIX previously, and look where that got me - sub-par returns for the past 3 years..