Saturday, December 29, 2007
Clubkampioenschappen 2007
This was our first race together and we wanted to use the gennaker. However the upwind-downwind racecourse made this tough so we flew her of the spinnaker pole. I don't believe this helped our speed of handling much but it was fun trying. It also lead me to become sure that I want a real spinnaker for her which I will use much more than this reachingsail.
In the last race we lost the spinnaker halyard up in the mast and because there was absolutely no wind at all and therefore noting else to do we decided to go aloft to get it. My sister Sam was the chosen volunteer and she went up like a trooper, camera in hand to make some great pictures. Here are the results of her efforts. The results of our efforts in regards to the races I would like to keep to myself.
Cheers
Nick
Friday, December 28, 2007
2007 Liveaboard trials?
Yes it was a bit cramped, especialy when Mariska and Mika were there in the weekends. But I was on board, had wireless internet in the marina so I also had live tv (www.uitzendinggemist.nl), I had a restaurant/bar within 100m and I could take her for a sail whenever I wanted to. In the first months I did so regularly but when the house came in to play it got a bit too much.
The room on board was fine, I had hot water and a shower available and I managed to stow allmost all my belonings on board. All in all I had a great three months living aboard and I wouldn't have missed it for the wordt. I don't know if it would have been as much fun without all the shore facilities in Muiden.
Cheers
Nick
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Sailing to Enkhuizen with Chris and Anita
What an amazing weekend it had been.
Cheers
Nick
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Lowestoft 2007
We went through the locks at IJmuiden at dusk and set for sea. The sea was a bit choppy and it took a little bit of getting used to but we settled in quickly. We tracked quite a few targets with our new AIS system. This works really great and I would recomend it to everyone. We hardly used the new radar system because AIS gave us far more detailed information. What helped best was the "Closest point of approach" which means how close are we going to cross (under a mile was a red light for us) and the time to CPA which means how long will it be until we need to take action. Sometimes this was pretty quick as some large cargo vessles sail at an alarming rate.
We had breakfast and lunch and before long we had the British coastline in sight. We navigated around the banks, which years before my father had stranded upon in the fog. The chop became heavier than before as we entered the channel between the banks. We sailed towards the harbour entrance, started the engine and doused the mailsail. We hailed the harbour patrol who gave us permission to enter On genua alone we entered the port and moored in the marine. We set foot on English soil for the first time ever after making the journey on our own keel. What a great feeling this was for the three of us. After calling home to take away the worries of the homefront we headed into town for a well deserved beer.
The town of Lowestoft was a bit of a dissapointment. I hope I don't put anyone reading this down but the ugliest people in the world live there. Unbelievable. We thought the name might be derived from Lowest-of-the-low. But we had a great time in the pub and had a well deserved shower in the yachtclub and a good sleep. We woke at 8pm and checked the weather report. I use the most amazing weather reporting tool called U-Grib (check out the link on the main page of this blog). There were two stormfronts, one circling the northsea near iceland and moving south. The other was near landsend and moving east. Bad news for sailing back home tomorrow. We decided to stay another day in lowestoft so we went to the pub for dinner and drinks. We had a great time in the Lowestoft nightlife and straggled back to our bunks at closing. The next morning, expecting some harsh weater we checkt the weatercharts. To my surprise the northsea front had blown out and the landsend front had stayed near france. This meant there was a nice gap of clear weather between Lowestoft and IJmuiden.
We decided to go for it. We left port and headed for sea. We were immediately sorry. Because of the stormfronts there were very high waves but there was hardly any wind. This meant that there was no means of pinning us in one position and we were lolled back and forth. Last nights beers soon came back to haunt us. The only one stable was Daan who stepped up while Michiel and I were moving from our bunk down below to the rail and back. Not a pretty sight. All in all Daan stood watch for 14 hours before we made it back up on deck.
Through all this rolling and mainly using the engine we were running low on diesel and suddenly the boom came loose from the mastfitting. The rolling had caused the selflocking nut to come undone and we had to go and fix it. Somehow we had very poor AIS reception which we soon found had something to do with us loosing the masthead antenna, also caused by the heavy swaying.
Our final task was trying to sail into IJmuiden because we were so low on fuel we were afraid we wouldn't be able to use the enging trough the locks. We tried to sail for a few hours but there was absolutely no wind at all. It turend out to be the fuelgauge that was the problem because when we enterend IJmuiden Marina and filled her up we could just get around 50 liters back in. There was plenty remaining to get to Muiden and halfway back to Lowestoft if we needed to.
All in all is was a fantastic maiden crossing and we enjoyed allmost every minute of this great adventure. We will certainly do this again next year!
Nick
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Welcome to the new Dannick.net
So all in all a good thing for everyone!
See you on the water!
Nick