24 hours sail-race

See preparation post for the intro.

We were lucky with the weather: there were just right amount wind and waves. Not tired. Crew of 6 people even allowed me to sleep between shifts and post-shifts. Trainings made us feel confident in tacking. We decided not to abuse spinnaker this time.

Start surprisingly was “gentelmen’s”: no flags’ procedure, just horn 🙂.

Night part of the race was calm with its’ own romance, but without the Moon. We experienced no crowds neither on legs nor at marks in area between SPORT-D and EZ D. We were adjusting our route on the go, especially when the wind changed easterly at late midnight.

We made a good two laps KG – EZ C – EZ D – KG. But waited too long to go to northern IJsselmeer, came to the shore at SB 28 – SB 18 – SB 28 and lost time there. Then checked into the gig at SB 8, almost touched it after rather early tack – our big fender could almost fit in between, but we had no time to untie it. At the final we took a chance to make a run WV 19 – KR A – WV 19, thanks to that we came to final WV 19 mark the most leeward on same tack: squeezed into the mark compacting 3 boats from windward against their will – it’s a pity that nobody from our crew was filming it. On the photo we are under number 155, and lemsterak flew right after us and made from the wind in a split sec after the mark (you can see it at his mast).

Second photo is 10 seconds before the first.

Then we had long run to the finish line under the butterfly (or melk meijse in Dutch) in front and “mizzen” made of part of the crew, standing wide on the back. We came 8 min before penalty time. Result: 23:51, 28 marks, 151 NM by track, 123.7 NM by legs.

On reaching courses of the last 1/4 of the race there were a bit more of mainsail than needed, but we did not take reefs, that’s why we had to workout at the helm, constantly breaking Berta with the rudder and not allowing her to go into the wind. Giving some slack to mainsheet didn’t help.

We were amazed of warmness and careness at Medemblik, plus that was a first time we saw 7 boats tied up side-to-side so it was possible to walk through them from the harbor master house to the meldstijger!

Our track: https://boating.page.link/LLGswqZ759ocLKkL6 And link to the photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=493022839493010&set=a.456893476439280