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ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED

After the Round Britain things looked pretty awful. Empty pockets. Difficulties everywhere. Taxman banging on the door. Not seen my kids in ages. Hard to focus on my work at the office. I saw no possibility to continue sailing. Not enouth time, not enough money. I decided to quit.

Many people said that I would regret this rigurous step, and I knew I would. But I felt I had no other choice.

Half a year later and things have calmed down. I put myself back together. Written some new stuff. Played a number of good gigs with my trio. Recorded some pieces for guitar solo. Did a half marathon in 1.44hrs. Felt much better again.

Finally I started to look for the possibilities to continue racing, in stead of only seeing the difficulties. And now I found a solution. Fantastic! 


    

DAM TOT DAM LOOP

What do sailors do to keep in good shape? Running ? Yep. http://www.damloop.nl/ . The event has an English touch: we have to run 10 English Miles, totalling 16,1 kilometer. Now that is a bit tricky and distracting for sailors used to sea miles.

"LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY"

This video was made in 1991 when I was playing in a band called Raibow Five with some veteran musicians including Gerard van Bezey (drums), Ger van Leeuwen (piano), Rob Meyn (vibrafone) and David de Marez Oyens (bas). David and me were studying at the conservatory at that time. We look so young .. time just slips away.

DAILY SAIL

We made it to the walhalla of the Daily Sail, tadaaa!! Home page, coverstory about the start of the RBI with this picture.

Another picture published on Daily Sail. Between al those white boats Home of Jazz and BluQube (sailed by Katie Miller - see below) really stand out. 

 

BACK IN LELYSTAD

After the race I went back to home to catch up with work, Janneke (6) her birthday party and so on.  Harry sailed the boat back to Holland in remarkeable style. Single handed, and with only a short fuel stop in Yarmouth. Very well done. An uneventful trip, was his comment when I joined him yesterday to clean up the boat. The boat has suffered no damage at all during the RB&I race but the sails need attention. The to do list for next years big event (AZAB) is starting to grow longer and longer.

LEG 5

One of our competitors described leg 5 as a lesson in patience. We had to deal with a large ridge of high pressure right above the Channel, slow moving and without significant change. Under the high the wind is rather difficult to forecast accurately. Given the warm weather the sea breeze effects caused major changes in the wind strength and direction closer to the coast. Grib files were not very usefull. We had to deal with very light airs and periods without any wind at all. 

At the anchor right on top of the Channel Tunnel. It was not easy to lift the anchor. We used a winch and put serious tension on the line, like a high E string on a guitar. That wasn't enough so we sailed to boat over the anchor to force it out. Suddendly the anchor came loose and off we went (in only 2 knots of wind) and we could take the anchor in to find out that the cross bar had snapped!

  

Apparantly we pulled a gap in the ceiling of the tunnel. Oh no, we saild, all the water will now float into the tunnel, the Channel will be empty  and we will have to walk to Plymouth.

A very tactical leg. On the one hand you would like to stay near the coast to take advantage of the sea breezes and to be able to anchor in shallow water. On the other hand the general wheater situation showed a (predominantly) westerly breeze that would veer to south-west later. This would justify to sail on the starbord tack away from the shore and to tack after the shift and lay Startpoint. We compromised between those two and when the wind finally settled in SWerly direction we were past Portland Bill, tacked and we could make it to Dartmouth.

Startpoint has proved to be really difficult to negotiate. This cape caused huge local changes in the wind, and closer inshore there was no wind at all. But we finally made it around this last cape before the finishline in Plymouth. A nice evening breeze did not die out in the evening and on 20.46 we crossed the line.

  

On the balcony of the Royal Western a nice crowed welcomed us in with support for the last meters and applause for us on the finishline. We finished as the 2nd VQ32. We gained significantly on Vandal (1st) in the last leg, but we could not overtake them. The gap with Velocity Girl (3rd) stayed the same. We finished about 18 hours before Jager, who were only 5 miles behind us near Dover. This shows how difficult this leg has been. 

This Round Britain started with very good winds and the fleet was a few days ahead of the normal schedule in Lerwick. The second half of the race was really slow in light airs all the way from Lerwick to Plymouth and not once did we pull in a reef.

It has been a very good race for Home of Jazz, with a wide variety of conditions. We were a good team. Again I learned a lot about the boat and about myself.