(Oslo, Norway)- Eivind Astrup and his team won the illustrious Hollender Regatta in Norway recently, emblematic of their late summer/early fall offshore sailing championship, dominating a huge class. Here is Eivind's account of what took place in the land of the northern lights:
"We love our boat and we sail our J/133 always as fast as we can. The link below is the results of the main fall event in Norway, the "Hollender" regatta with 330 entries. The distance is 50 nm. I think you will like our class result (1st out of 33 boats) and you will note that we have reasonably good boats behind us. Otherwise, we were 1 min 05 secs from winning overall. Last year, we also won our class and missed the overall victory by 2 mins, so we'll soon be there!
I had the pleasure of helming the boat at a speed of 14-16 knots on flat water for about an hour, attaining 17 several times and a peak speed of 18.5 knots, with 7 guys sitting on the transom. The pressure was such that the cover of the spinnaker sheet melted! As a result we lost control, ended up on the roof and destroyed the sail. A new one was hoisted but the lesson is clear: Under a load like this, the drum has to be watered in order to cool down the sheet. (Ed's note- holy COW that's a lot of HEAT to melt a spinnaker sheet like that-- fair warning to all of us to "grind hard but stay cool"!!). Here is the link.
