News from on board Winsome II

August 13, 2013

We passed Lizard Point in winds of 13-14 knots but the relatively high waves, in combination with not so much wind, made it impossible to get a good speed with Winsome. There was really nothing we could about that. We continue to loose distance on both Foggy Dew and on Wasabi. The AIS of Foggy Dew was as usual off, or not well working as Noel Racine told me during the briefing session for the race. I have no reason not to believe him, but it is really unfair and if wil ask him again to have his AIS either replaced or modified.

Around Lizard Point something funny happened. From behind us came a J-111 called Alphalink [FRA 38221] as windward boat. They tried to sail past and over us, but did not manage it, since the old lady Winsome simply sailed higher. They came very very close and to avoid a collission, or rather a touch, they had to tack. Half an hour later, they came back, but now followed by another J-111 called  Djinn [BEL 11111]. Also this time they were the windward boat, but now in fact it were two, rather close to each other, almost like a catamran. Same story with the same result. They could not pass us, but now two boats had to tack, to avoid two collissions. Not a word was exchanged between any of the boats. Hotel Alpha, Hotel Alpha!!

 At or around Runnel Stone Light Buoy we had to choose how to pass the newly dictated Area of Obstruction i.e. in this case the TSS [Traffic  Separation Scheme] of Lands End. We choose to take the East passage open to the boats in this race. Winds and waves have not been in our favour at all yesterday, nor last night, so we had to see on the race results page, Foggy Dew and Wasabi slowly moving away from us. At 1900 Foggy Dew had already a 10 Miles lead on us.

 Otherwise it was a quiet night with 170 Nm in front of us to the Fastnet Rock. We charged our batteries for 90 minutes and enjoyed the fine food prepared and served by Joost and Floris, like they have done to skilfully on the Sevenstar Round Britain & Ireland Race in 2010.

If anyone reading this blog would check our position on the RORC website, look for IRC-4 Class and click the button “switch to VMG from start mode” since the other results are based on the speed of the boats just at the moment of calculating the predicted position. The one I gave you calculates the  predicted positions based upon the average speed from start to the moment of the calculations, so are less erratic. Use the URL www.fastnet.rorc.org to start with and then continue as I suggested here above.

The boat is now moving like a horse. This is not good for our speed, nor for my enthousiasm to continue writing this blog. I will try again tomorrow, when we must have rounded the Fastnet Rock by then. Now we are nearly half way in the race.

Harry