Breskens-Myth of Malham 2017d

June 2, 2017

This blog will be looking like Homer’s Odyssey i.e. starting at our arrival in Breskens [Ithaca] and lasting 5 days [3 years].

Winsome arrived in Breskens on Wednesday 31 May at around 11:00 in an extraordinary short time of 33 hours during which 190 Nm were covered. We left Cowes at 01:00 UTC and we had only had favourable winds and tides, all along the route. Moreover the weather was good and the sun was shining. Even on this last leg the night was cold so one sleeping bag was not enough.

Winsome finished on Monday 29 May at 21:54 UTC after 300 Nm over the ground. Since we did not miss any buoy this time we made it 5th in our Class in which we had 43 entrants, 38 starters, 14 finishers. We had to anchor two times, we lost one anchor, we lost the connection with our steering gear since the self tailing bolt apparently fell off, in the middle of the night. Not many boats were close to us, but it was dark and we must have lost here some 20 minutes.

During this race we encountered three times mv Spiegelgracht carrying yachts. One time South of the IoW, one time in the Eastern Solent and one time in Zeebrugge (there we knew from the AIS that she was in port). I talked to the Master in the night but he had not a clue who I was.

When we rounded the Eddy Stone Rocks we did see Rocket Dog II actually hitting a rock or dry falling land (green on our chart indicating +5.5 metres at astronomical tide).

Just prior to rounding the Rocks ourselves we had an unpleasant encounter with Bella of London GBR8750R. Their crew were shouting at us ‘you are twats’ but the problem was we did not have THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY on board being unfamiliar with the word ‘twats’. Finally someone on board, sleeping at the time of the incident could give us with some reluctance a free translation. Shocking I must say. I personally would like this to have happened 100 years ago since then there would be an easy solution i.e. they would withdraw as RORC Member and if not I would do it. Let us see what happens this time with this odd and uncivilised shouting. I thought immediately of Donald Trump, but he was certainly not on board having some other problems on his hands in the White House.

At that moment we were still in a good position, 1st in Class, 3rd overall.

At Anvil Point we crossed Foggy Dew at one boat length, but I made the mistake to stay too close to the coast and that did cost us time.

Closer to Bill of Portland we did run into three very very steeps waves. The boat fell like to rock and later it appeared that the VHF antenna blocked our mast head unit so we had not AWA nor any logical Isochrones anymore.

When leaving the Solent we had a nice battle with Foggy Dew. We were shoulder to shoulder. Good boat handling and helming (Leen) on Winsome.

We started well being 3 boat lengths away from the start line at the gun.

On Friday we (Leen, Florent and myself) prepared Winsome. Florent did all the shopping and cooking but was helped by a previously prepared meal by Herman.