A narrow escape to stay in the race

August 8, 2008

Friday 9^th August 2008 This morning tensions were high, as were the expectations. We knew that today SALVO could win class IRC 4 of this year’s SCW if they did well. That considered we knew we had to beat SALVO today, to stay in the race. The committee boat startline was moved a couple of times. Both IRC SZ and IRC 2 were treated with a black flag procedure after a general recall. Our first start was brilliant, but unfortunately we had a general recall as well. (We might have been OCS ourselves.) For the second start conditions were good. Nice 15 knots of breeze, no swell and hardly any current. Unfortunately we did not manage to clear the pack. We were with eleven tons in the middle of the ‘malaise’. After we tacked out we were in about tenth place. Finally clean air and slightly above the rest of the field. Racing was on! Because there was a lot at stake we were all fighting for it. With good boatspeed and some nice laylines (“well done Harry, I want to see this every day”)  we managed to fight our way back to the top 3. SALVO was close and EXCITABLE was still leading on the water.  SALVO gave us a break by sailing away from the fleet, from which they did not recover. At the second to last mark we calculated that we were leading the fleet on corrected time. Finally we showed we learned from last year. We did some nice defensive sailing and we managed not to get in to trouble/protests with other boats around us, thanks to some nice helming by Andy. Cowes Radio cheerfully talked us over the finishline. We got the gun for second over the line. An excellent day of sailing, from all of us. Chances are in favour of SALVO, but tomorrow we will fight like gladiators for the small chance of winning IRC class 4 overall. Boj and Joost H.  

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