AAM CW 2014 Day 3

August 4, 2014

Plan your race, and race your plan!

As we agreed on yesterday during the debrief, we were on the water at 9 am, and were the first boat out. This gave us time to motor out to the West to our starting line at Crafts Insurance.com. We could hoist the sails early, tack a few times, but most importantly, we had plenty of time to fix the lay lines on the computer by Floris and Boj (who really did not want the ‘Dick du Jour’ t-shirt for a second time) and fix the headings by Laura, Leen, Harry and mostly Robert Langford-Wood. Due to lack of wind, the race was postponed till midday, which gave us even more time to fix this all, which paid off during the race!

We started, as we planned, just behind the pack and got out nicely when the boats in front of us were all parked at the line and we could pass and managed to sail to the shore for tidal relief. Boat handling was great, tacking went smoothly and we managed to stay close to our competitors when aiming for the first lay line, which we over stood again. Differently from the previous days, all our competition also over stood this mark so no harm done here. We rounded the first mark after which the spinnaker was in top before we knew it, thanks to Joost Nijhoff, who recovered nicely from his injury falling down the hatch. On the second upwind beat again we managed to hug the shore and read 2.3 meters of water on the instruments once. Very different from yesterday we were not dictated by other boats as much and had hardly any starboard boats to tack or duck for.

The second spinaker course was over 5 NM in length and with excellent trimming by Joost Dantuma and steering of Laura we kept our speed and kept Floris and Joost Nijhoff busy with hoisting and dropping the Ruby 5 times. Boj made the only mistake of the day when crossing the Redfunnel ferry which gave us a lot of dirt. A mistake that had pink shirt written all over it. On the downwind mark we again had an excellent rounding of the mark and tacked up, nicely avoiding the smaller boats on starboard tack and into the tidal relief of bramble bank before crossing the Solent getting us in stronger tides before finishing at the RYS finish line. All the race we stayed close to our competition (with better IRC ratings) so we knew we were at least the 4th or 5th boat on corrected time. Zarafa and Strait Dealer were well ahead of us and came in first and second. Alaris, Malice, Elaine all finished close to us, but on corrected time we beat them and finished 3rd!

So what we learned today: getting out early pays off and sail your plan!

Boj awarded himself with the ‘Dick du Jour’ shirt for the second day in a row for the Redfunnel issue. I have heard you may keep the shirt when ‘winning’ it three times in a row. Looking forward to tomorrow, mostly for the sailing, partly for Boj getting even a tighter grip on the pink shirt, which may have a name change to ‘Dick du Semaine’

Hidde.

P.S. Although in general we were more gutsy then yesterday, we would like you to have a look at our recordings from yesterday. WINSOME near Egypt Point, sailing in shallow rocks… e.g. WINSOME on the rocks!