The JPK exodus

July 28, 2014

After our last minute preparation on the hull done by Medina Yard, we felt good about this race.  The fact that we do not dry-sail Winsome [for my family it means to lift the boat after each and every race to keep her hull immaculate], like many of our competitors do, is a disadvantage really. So this time we sailed with more or less equal weapons.

We were late in our preparations of the start. We choose the North side of the starting line. In spite of the fact that we had to go only 10 boat lengths -under spinnaker I- we were not as North as we would have liked. Nevertheless we were content with such start.

Not much wind on the Solent. Most of the times our Boatspeed was only 0-1 knots and our GS 3-4 knots i.e.the speed of the tide.

Looking on AIS we could see FOGGY DEW after having passed Hurst Castle, drift sideways over the Shingles, we decided not to take that same risk in spite of the rise of the tide of 4 meters plus, so we let ourselves drift sideways past Hurst Castle. No wind at all. FOGGY DEW was the first boat picking up the new wind. It was then already past 11am.

The above photo is turned upside down. I did not manage in changing that. The blue line is the COG [Course over Ground] from WINSOME just Southwest of Hurst Castle to the Southern part of the Shingles, close to the Needles.

At 15:28 we rounded DZB Buoy with 26 Nm on our log and to our surprise we found ourselves very very close to FOGGY DEW.

Under spinnaker I we made the trip to our first and only virtual waypoint in this race, called WP No 1. We rounded it at 19:40, after having logged 64 Nm.

Then a long leg to Poole Bar No 1 Buoy. We did not succeed on this leg to get close to FOGGY DEW, but we made a lot of ground close to the Needles where we got a header just at the right moment. Luck was on our side.

Close to Poole Bar No 1 Buoy we did fight for our lives. We stayed South of that Buoy before we tacked and that pages off. Again close to FOGGY DEW, about half a Mile behind them.

We are not proud of our decisions on the next leg towards Saint Catherine’s Point. We did not follow FOGGY DEW and we did not go inside like we did this year earlier on the JPG Round the Island Race. We changed course and tried to undo some of the damages. Only partially we had success. This leg looked we were racing against MALICE only.

At Saint Catherine’s Point we saw FOGGY DEW and NIGHT AND DAY powering away at over 8 knots when WINSOME and MALICE were still not doing more than 4 knots. Difficult moments. Then we got the same wind and had to consider changing to Genoa II. Both Genoa I and II were brand new and our UK-de-Vries sailmaker Renze Runia, on board with his daughter Emma, would not have objected a split second to go for Genoa II so that we could have tested that one for the first time as well.

Then we started to really hunt NIGHT and DAY and FOGGY DEW. We had many exciting moments, especially in the last hour when we really sailed better than the two JPK’s.

When FOGGY DEW finished my calculations showed we had 25,9 minutes left to finish to win. We used 24 minutes thanks to excellent trimming of Renze, helming of Leen and deep sleeping of Alex.

We only learned from Boj after finishing [so no outside help] that WINSOME was scored 1st in our Class and only later during the interview by RORC’s Louay Habib, that we also finished in 1st position overall.

Sorry for our French competitors. Thanks to everyone who helped in getting WINSOME to this result. The crew: Leen, Renze, Emma, Alex, Herman, Floris and Joost. The shore: Berthon Boat Yard, Jongkind, Wroath and Medina Yard.

In Dutch we say “zonder geluk vaart niemand wel”.

So we continue to try and win the IRC Championship in Class 4.