mixed emotions

August 12, 2012

Another perfect sailingday. Just enough wind at the start for Winsome. We made a very good start and headed together with Fever and Yes! for the first mark “Cowes Radio”. After that mark we returned more or less in the direction of the start under spinnaker but the distance was only 0,7 Nm. No problem to handle for Winsome’s crew.

We did continue in good spirits always competing with Fever and with Yes! but at a given moment we observed that Mongoose did escape from the field. Not at any stage we had a chance to get back to her.

At West Lepe, at the end of another spinaker run, we made an unfortunately rounding which did cost us ground and at the next mark we had to make a tack at the very last moment to round it. These were basically the only two places/incidents where we know we lost some ground to the rest of our competitors. Otherwise we had a very good boat handling and our new Mainsail halyard did it’s work for which we bought her. Mac did his usual good job by delivering the new Mainsail halyard at 06:30.

Floris made his usual trip to the end of spinnaker boom to free the downhaul which was entangled in sheets and guys.

Have a look into the Nasa Space Centre on board which is more or less considered as my private domain. I am not aware of having made a navigational mistake in this race, staying on the same level as the rest of the crew.

It was a nice day, nice racing, beautifull weather as the picture below may show you.

We thought being again 5th today but we did not reckon with Jika Jika who beat us on rating arriving 2,5 minutes after us. This time we had no hinder from Boomerang but she was replaced in the score by Xcellent having done an excellent race today. So we became 6th today. Places 5-6 on the first two days are good enough for a good end score at the end of this week!

We just need some luck, but apart from that we are content with our performance.

The below screen shows you the last leg of the race towards the finish. We did that under spinnaker I with full tide in our favour. Of course this counted for all boats (..)

Will be back to you tomorrow.