Cowes Week 2009, day 5

August 5, 2009

Today was a day of disaster. After a delay of two hours we finally started in very little wind. We made a bad start and got at the back of fleet right away. When the wind even dropped further most of our Class had passed already the windward mark taking advantage of the tide so a big gap existing nearly immediately much to our regret. Then the wind dropped to 0,0 knots, we had to anchor, we had to sail in the wrong direction once the wind picked up a little bit and we considered to have no chances at all.

Then we heard over the radio a shortening of the course, rather than a cancellation, so we continued our struggle/battle against an unfortunate start.

All of a sudden we did realize that when the first boat in our Class would not reach the finish prior to 1800, the race would be abandoned without a score for today. Yes! was leading the pack followed by Salvo and we saw Yes! creaping along the English coast towards the finish with little hope of getting there until 1800. Then all of a sudden the wind increased from 2 to 10 knots. Yes! reached the finish 1 minute and 20 seconds prior to the deadline for today. As a consequence our timelimit was extended until 1900. All of a sudden we found ourselves in the middle of a group of say 8 boats of our Class trying to get to the finish and it looked like that at least Winsome would make it easily. NO, again bad luck. The wind dropped again to 3 knots and we just missed the finish, with Running Bear of Martin Stanley waiting, by some 7 minutes.

It is bad to hear this from a competitor like we who did not have a good score, but today should have been abandoned in the first place. For a class with boats of entirely different weights, this was very very unfair to us.

Still with one discart we are holding on to a third place in our Class but we cannot have any more misfortune in the next two days.

We all missed the pricegiving for the RORC Channel Race and I personally missed the Memorial for the Fastnet Race in 1979. We were home at around 9pm where Sophia awaited us as usual with delicous food, wine and beer.

I do hope that tomorrow one of the Friezen will write something more pleasant.

Harry J. Heijst