(The Hague, Netherlands)- The J/22 Team "IRON MAST" - NED 1455- from the Netherlands provided their report sailing the recent Delta Lloyd North Sea Regatta. Here's their commentary:"It's Thursday evening, the NSR is finally beckoning at our door. The boat is properly prepared but we still have to make a few adjustments to the outhaul and, especially, our GoPro video attachment to the boat (must record all good deeds and bad deeds!). Around 1700 hrs we leave for Scheveningen, where we launch the boats into the water. The weather doesn't help, but for the real diehard sailors, this doesn't matter (note- it was raining and blowing like hell!).
Friday: The first race starts. Expectations were high, this puts a lot of pressure on us, especially since the North Sea waters are unknown to us. We do not know what awaits us. We sail out of the harbor mouth with an army of boats behind us in a beautiful spectacle. The waves are not so bad, they're not really high but this is nothing like sailing on our "flat water" lake! After some minor problems we still have a beautiful day for sailing, unfortunately our performance was not so beautiful! We had many problems with the currents and were very focused on the waves! It blew hard all day, so it cost us a lot of in terms of physical strength, we were quite tired and exhausted. But, we still managed to get eighth place for the day! Not bad for virgin ocean navigators on the high seas off the Netherlands!
Saturday: After the tough first day, we went back with good spirits on the water. It was quite helpful there was less wind. We learned a lot. It was a beautiful day with good and bad moments and finally, we maintained our position of 8th in the fleet-- a good thing for us!
Sunday: Sunday was a beautiful day. The sun was simply spectacular, and warm! This gave us a nice tan after three days of the North Sea's brutal weather. The sun helped us sail better! The first two races we were twice 5th. Then it began to blow harder, again this did not work in our favor as we slowly fell back in the field. In the end we were able to grab 7th place in the overall standings. This day was physically very tough for us.
Monday: After three hard days of sailing, we faced the final day of racing in Scheveningen with great courage and determination to do better! But, this time the wind completely failed us! We rigged the boat and went out hoping to race. When we were offshore, we found out to our surprise that we had some damage to the side of our boat-- apparently we had a collision with an object in the water on Sunday's sailing. Good grief! It was not too bad, but enough for Stephan on our boat to take a dip in the chilly North Sea to fix it with emergency repairs (tape). Sadly, there was no wind for the day, and with racing canceled we head for home.
Team IRON MAST finished 7th overall. We gained a mountain of experience that we can build on for the next challenge-- the upcoming J/22 European Championship. In the meantime, we'll have to fix the boat, fix our bodies, fix our brains and fix our bruised egos!" For more J/22 Delta Lloyd Regatta sailing information
|