Never ever give up!

August 13, 2016

After the fantastic and now traditional Thursday evening dinner with our friends from Yes! and Salvo, Friday was our final day of Cowes week to sail for a good overall result…..and we did!!

The conditions were good for Winsome, 10-12 knots of breeze with gusts 16-18, and so was the course: an upwind start, a very long first beat and some up and down winds. So ideal circumstances for us to hopefully make some distance on our competitors in the beats while on the down winds there was not enough wind for the lighter boats to plane and come closer to us again.

With these conditions, the crew was confident we could make the overall podium and Laura was the biggest optimist of all and repeated that a 2nd place overall was possible.

The start line was very difficult as we were barely able to make the line. Since all boats were having difficulties with the line, it resulted in a pack of boats at the pin end of the line, with not such a good position for Winsome. We cleared the line probably as the 7th boat. Sophie took Sarai, Christien, and Bin and Corrie Kroon to the start in Luna, so we had to make this up not only to ourselves, but also to our supporters.
Due to great helming by Laura, good calls by Boj and some quick tacks (Joost D and myself had good guns today’) we were able to get clear air and. Next, we had a great beat of 7 NM west to round Denisons as the first boat on the water. In the downwind thereafter and the next beat Harry made some amazing laylines and Laura was able to push Winsome to round the upwind marks with a minimum of tacks required without having to bail out.
Halfway through the race our lead was already more than 2 minutes on the water on Vanilla, however, for a first place on corrected time, we needed to extend our lead further.
When the wind picked up, we changed from the No. 1 kite to the No. 2 on our 2nd run downwind to Craftsinsurance and this is when my favorite conversation of Cowes Week 2016 took place:
Joost D.: ‘Boj?’
Boj: ‘No!’
One might wonder what this conversation was about, but everyone knew immediately when 2 minutes later Joost D. tried again: ‘If we want to win this we have to be aggressive. I think we should change to the No. 1 kite.’ And so we did, the wind didn’t increase and we prepared for a spinnaker peel, which was perfectly executed by the Floris, Joost N and Herman on the foredeck. This immediately increased our speed by 0.7 kts. The new spinnaker 1 is a beautiful sail.

For the rest of the race we remained eager, made no mistakes, had great boat handling, good trimming, great navigation, lay lines and tactics and wonderful helming: one might say we sailed the perfect race.
After 3:37:51 we finished first and got another gun! Luna was present at the finish with our supporters and took a nice picture of Winsome with the Spinnaker 1 and Ruby flying.

Blackjack II finished 2nd five and a half minutes later, more than enough fur us to have our third day win of the week. More importantly: This race Vanilla finished 3rd and Upstart, J’ronimo and Alamara B didn’t make it in the top 3. This was the script we had hoped for and Laura had been predicting: a 2nd place overall in IRC 5 for Cowes week 2016!

We had a quick debrief with Pim’s at the RYS again (a new tradition is born) and left for Winsome’s cottage, only to return 20 minutes later in jacket and tie to collect our prizes for the Thursday and Friday race. Some nice pictures were taken of the Winsome Crew.

With the worst start of the week imaginable on Saturday and the lottery race of Wednesday, this was the highest achievable.
Sometimes silver feels like gold!
Congratulations to the crew from Haven K-J Enigma for sailing the most consistent and winning IRC Class 5 overall. Also our salute to ‘Yes!’ for winning not only the IRC 3 overall, but also for their 5th Cowes week black group victory! We are sure Thursday’s dinner with Sophie’s lobster and Indy’s cakes helped you to win Friday’s race.
Thank you all for a great week! The crew: Harry, Leen, Boj, Laura, Joost D, Joost N, Floris and Herman.
And our support team: Sophie, Bin and Corrie Kroon, Indy, Noah, Christien and Sarai

The entire crew accepted Harry’s invitation to return next year for Cowes week, well, my position as a crew member for CW 2017 is open for discussion as Indy, Noah, the youngest WINSOME child (due to arrive in November) and myself move to Adelaide in December. However, if I can get the time off from work, I am happy to put in the 24 hours of travel.

Hidde Kroon

Herman made our final movie:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQoXqLiRoEo&w=560&h=315]

Final results: