Race 13 - Day 1
Crew Diary - Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland to Den Helder, Netherlands
18 July

Fred Dankers
Fred Dankers
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The sun was out when we said our goodbyes to the friendly people of Derry. Lots of waving and applauding on the quay during the Parade of Sail. Afterwards we motored down the Foyle river to Greencastle. There the race committee had prepared a short course for the fleet to show off our fleet race skills before we were to head out to sea for the trip to Den Helder in The Netherlands.

The starting line was made up of two flag poles on both sides of the river. From there we had to sail a short upwind leg to a buoy, keep that to starboard, bear away to a spreader buoy, and proceed downwind past the starting line out to the open sea.

Skipper Olivier had scouted the starting area and concluded that the left side of the line was favoured because of wind and current conditions. He made a cunning plan. We wanted to proceed on starboard tack parallel to the line and tack over to port tack quickly after the starting gun. We expected this action to enable us to cross ahead of the other yachts and give us a clear track towards the upwind mark.

Alas this plan did not work out as expected. On the other (right) side of the starting line both Garmin and Derry~Londonderry~Doire had very good starts. When we tacked over to port we could not cross ahead of them. We were forced to tack back to starboard, lost our speed because of it, and ended up sailing in the disturbed air of our competitors. From that moment we had lost the battle on the upwind beat. What followed was Garmin and Derry~Londonderry~Doire to increase their lead and the rest of the fleet manoeuvring in disturbed air, unable to maintain good speed. So we rounded the upwind mark bringing up the rear together with Unicef.

The next step was to hoist our spinnaker quickly, gybe to starboard at the spreader mark and proceed as close to shore as we dared to avoid the current that was running against us as we sailed back towards the starting area. This worked wonderfully well. We soon started overtaking other boats that were in the middle of the river. By the starting line we had moved up to third position. And closing the gap with Garmin and Derry~Londonderry~Doire.

15 minutes later we got lucky. The wind dropped to just a few knots. Garmin and Derry~Londonderry~Doire got stuck in windholes and we were still moving along the shoreline. We were leading, but by a very small margin. The rest of the fleet was closely following us like a pack of bloodhounds. And they pounced on us when we met a windhole ourselves and tried to gybe away. The gybe failed and we stopped. Ouch, 5 or 6 yachts sailed past when the wind picked up and we were still struggling to get the spinnaker off the forestay.

This Race Start as a good example of how exciting and frustrating regatta style fleet racing can be. From zero to hero and back again in one hour of racing, with numerous tacks, gybes and tactical decisions.