Cowes Week day 3

August 13, 2012

Today we had an interesting start, a close reach with the spinnaker until the first mark. The usual suspects were around us: Fever, Yes!, Mongoose in front and Brightwork riding our sternwave. After the first rounding we had a beat up to the island. In hindsight we chose the wrong side of the course, loosing water on our competitors. Catch-up time for Winsome. Mark after mark we continued to sail through the field. Excellent driving from Peter, navigation from Harry and tactics from Boj brought us back toward the front of the fleet.

After the last rounding we had a fetch towards the finish, this ended up to be quite an exciting piece of sailing for us. We started to overtake some other yachts, we even overtook Yes!. This is a good thing, however, keep in mind that Adam Gosling is the owner of Yes! and he invited us for dinner tonight…….. We’re not sure how our result on the water will influence dinner tonight. On rating we ended with a sixth place for today, one place behind Gosling in the Yes!. Fever is leading overall, and we are fourth. It may sound a bit disappointing, on the contrary, we are very happy with the results. We are sailing against very good yachtsmen and fast yachts, the completion is hard and the stakes are high. I guess they just make less mistakes than we do.

We had an excellent day on the water, good conditions, the boathandling was good and we’re sailing with a great bunch of guys. Where else would you rather be (except in first place)?  So tonight, dinner with a close rival, we are looking forward to tomorrow, yet another day of sailing for us. Life’s great at this end.

Bon Vents

Joost H