I will have to thank my crew for an excellent call yesterday. After we flipped at the downwind gate and righted the boat I assumed that we had been passed by all the boats in the fleet and so that it was better to sail towards the shore and rehoist my mainsail and get back in time for the second start. She convinced me to make a detour throught the finish and at least score a result in stead of a DNF.

Turns out that on handicap we still scored a 2nd place ! That is after taken our sweet time righting the boat. Okay, okay, due to the harsh conditions only 4 boats did start in our open class but still. I could have sworn that were DFl after our swim.

The event, westland Cup, really suffered from big wind and rough seastate this year. Last year, when we were there with the F16 Dutch coast challenge event, the open class contained 25 boats and all raced. This year only 4 boats started in the open class with at least 1 result (no DNS or DNF)

I think we are in for a nice race weekend and not have yet another blown-out and "keep yourself and your boat whole" event.

But I did enjoy myself inmensely as by coincident I was hooked with an excellent crew. She is still new at the game of catsailing and racing, but boy, what a progress she must have made in the last 5 months since she started cat sailing. I'm going to place an order at the production line that turns out crew/sailors like her. Sadly that we could get only 1 race in yesterday.

Once again it is proved to me that one must really find and hook up with a very good crew, in order to do really well when sailing these high performance spi boats. The skipper needs to know the boat in every and all aspects and understands every twitch she makes, but in the are of tactic, tuning/trimming and speed under spi the crew is all important and the skipper is just sort of an assigned taxi driver that creates an environment in which the crew can excell so that a good result can be made.

Next F16 class race in 3 weeks.

Wouter