|
Final leg: Lowestoft to Plymouth - [01-07-2010] We enjoyed a very nice stop at Lowestoft, with a lot of social time at the Yacht Club. As Greyhound left in the early evening I watched their progress on the tracker, and saw that they were going frightfully fast, at around 9 knots. We had a few hours of sleep before getting up again at 02:45 to get ready for our last start. The sun had just begun to rise and the sea was flat when we got on our way. The wind had dropped a little, but was enough to fill our Code 0 sail. We made good speeds all the way down past the Thames Estuary and past the new offshore wind park. We got a little too close to the cliffs of Dover, where the wind dropped, but were able to continue. After we rounded Dover and turned west we set the spinnaker. The temperature was a lot more pleasant than before. Even when it got dark, and the full moon began to shine, we didn't need our hats and gloves like usual. Then the wind really dropped out for ther first time. After a while it came back from the west, so that we started beating against it. In this way we continued until the next afternoon. We had a friend who send us the position of the Greyhound a few times a day so that we could see whether we were closing in on them or not, and we had already gone from 60 to 30 miles difference! Then we fell into probably the same windhole that they were in, about 30 miles before the Isle of Wight. With the current against us, the best way to minimise loss was to put out the anchor. We waited for wind for about 1,5 hours, and then a light breeze came up from the south west, which got us sailing again. This was to be the start of a chain of wind holes, shifts and unreliable winds in general. We found that for some reason, the weather seemed to change with every tide, with a period of very little wind in between. Interesting, but also increasingly frustrating. Every time when we just started making some nice progress it dropped again. Especially the current against was hard to beat, with the ruling southwesterly winds. In the light air, even small waves managed to take out the speed that we had just built up. Generally, we only made real progress when the current was with us.
The next day we had to anchor again, for 3 hours at 60 m depth. Through the positions of Greyhound and a few others we saw that everyone was having a hard time. We even discovered that the no. 2 in our class, Streamline, was not far away and that we might beat them as well! So we were motivated enough when the wind came back and were able to make our way towards Start Point the following day and night. The finish seemed not far away and we might get there by the end of the next afternoon. But, as the saying goes, "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings", and we got parked near Start Point for many hours while we saw Streamline on the horizon, sailing past at a leisurely speed. It started getting dark when we finally got into some wind again. After rounding Prawle Point, we had only 20 miles left to the finish. The wind even picked up and we fled along at 8 knots for a while. Mentally we were preparing for the finish line, when, two miles before Plymouth's harbour breakwater, the wind completely fell out again. This time we could see the harbour lights. As the tide was with us, we had not a moment to loose and got out the oars again. Thus we rowed our longest distance yet, two miles, until we passed the breakwater. Once we had passed it, the water was flat and a few knots of wind were able to blow us the last 1,5 mile to the finish. We were pleasantly surprised when the horn blew from the clubhouse at our passing the finish. Thank you, Peter Taylor, for staying up for us! The finish time was in good Vijaya style: 04:30:31, after a little over 3 days. It got light as we motored into Queen Anne's Battery again and found a place alongside Greyhound. All was quiet, so we just toasted with each other to celebrate our completing of the race. We took out the laptop to check the other boats' results and finish times and found to our surprise that we were already included and had achieved a second place in our class! An extra reason to toast and then we were able to get to bed with a big smile on our faces. Now it is two days later and we have started on our way home again. We still saw Home of Jazz and Jager finish and shared our stories with Greyhound, Streamline and many others. We feel very privileged and happy to have been able to experience the entire race. Every leg and every stop-over has been entirely different from each other. We have experienced most types of wind and weather and made a lot of new friends. A big thank you to all fellow competitors for making such a good atmosphere everywhere, and an even bigger thank you to everyone in the race committee and all the people at the stop-overs who made it such an unforgettable experience!!! We can truly recommend this race to anyone who likes to sail, enjoys a little challenge and has some holidays to spare ;).  VIJAYA finished! - [29-06-2010] Early this day Vijaya crossed the finish line of this exciting race around Ireland and the British Isles. Race Director Peter Taylor let the finishing horn at the Royal Western Yacht Club sound at 04:19:31. The final 3,5 miles the crew rowed Vijaya over the still dark and calm Plymouth Sound and harbour. More updates and pics to follow soon..  From Lerwick to Lowestoft - [25-06-2010]  After all the fun in Lerwick we set off again just before sunrise (04:18) on Sunday morning. A good northerly breeze filled the spinnaker, and we passed four killer whales (orcas) also heading south. As we were expecting light weather further on in the race we were happy with the passing of every mile. We managed to keep the spinnaker on until the afternoon the next day, in varying foggy, drizzly and sometimes sunny weather. Then the wind backed and became lighter, so that we continued under our Code 0 sail.After a while, the wind died out and then returned from the south, so that we hoisted our jib and started reaching. Thus we continued for a long, long time.... the wind backed slightly, so that we sailed mostly on a starboard tack, but it was hard to know what to expect. The grib files (wind forecast) that we downloaded on the way were unreliable and we had to guess which way was best and when to tack. Several times the wind died and came back again, but always from the wrong direction, so we kept on tacking. Tiresome conditions, as we had to be alert on any changes all the time. For a while we were able to sail at a narrow reach with the spinnaker, but most of the time it was a high reach. We had a friend send us the positions of the other competitors, and it showed that the distances between boats in general was increasing: no boat was close either in front or behind us. Early during the third day we had the last 100 miles ahead of us, and we calculated that we might be able to just make it to the finish while the current was with us. But of course then we got another period without wind which blew our hopes away. During the early evening we got a breeze that brought us to about ten miles from Lowestoft. We sailed over the sandbanks, and the sea was beautifully flat so that we made speed out of every little puff we got. Then the current turned against us and the wind decreased to about five knots, straight against. We tacked and tacked with angles that got worse and worse. We tried to sail on waters as shallow as we dared, so that we would meet less current. This strategy worked relatively well, but we couldn't go too far since we noticed that our maps were not very precise on the banks. The last five miles took us five hours, tacking and trying to keep speed in the boat. The wind shifted a little every time, and suddenly we were able to stand up to the finish line. Great relief! But then the wind died completely. We got out the oars and started rowing the last mile. Quite exhausted, we passed the finish at 03:59 local time. Great time again for our next start! As I sit typing this in the Yacht Club's clubhouse, we followed the finish of the front runners, who had a very exciting last leg. Congratulations to Rune and Arild on the Norwegian boat SOLO!! They finally managed to pass their opponents in light winds during the last miles. For us, the game is still on. We are especially competing with Greyhound, who are now an hour ahead of us in corrected time. If we beat them, we can take still take third place in our class. They are leaving this afternoon, and we start the chase in the early morning. Conditions will be interesting again: light and variable weather, many headwinds on the south coast... We are looking forward to an exciting finale! :) PS1: Watch Vijaya surfing (max 16.3 knts) towards Muckle Flugga in near gale force winds. PS2: Also added new pics  Tracker! - [25-06-2010] PS For those that haven't discovered it yet: during racing, you can follow our most recent experiences through the little messages that we send along with the tracker positions on our TRACKER page Almost real-time position updates (hourly): please visit the official Race Site  In Lerwick - [19-06-2010] We came in during the same night as most of the yacht participating in the Bergen-Shetland Race. We know many of them well, having competed in this race a number of times the previous years, so there is a double party pressure upon us here! We are trying as good as we can and attended the famous party at the Lerwick Boating Club yesterday.
Today (Saturday) we are getting ready for our start early tomorrow morning, fixing some stuff, buying food and water and checking the weather for the next and longest leg in the race, southwards to Lowestoft. The forecast shows very light winds, so this one may take us a while to complete. But mostly from the north, so we will have our spinnaker running again and expect comfortable conditions. Best to bring a lot of sun screen and Pina Colada :D!  Barra to Lerwick - [19-06-2010] We had a cosy dinner on the Greyhound on our last night in Barra. Huib showed off his dark side by brutally killing dozens of langoustines in boiling water, and we had strawberries and cream for dessert. Greyhound had to start that night at 02:00, while we, with our brilliant time-management, were able to enjoy a good night´s sleep and start at 10:00. Later we learned that all boats that started that night had been drifting about for hours without any wind, one even having to anchor on the starting line to prevent floating backwards on the current. When we got out, there was a light, but steady breeze and we could quietly tack southwards to round Barra Head. After that, we set course to the northwest to round the islands of Saint Kilda. We had been looking forward a lot to see this famous and remote little island group, that was populated until the 1930´s and whose population mainly fed on sea birds that they caught on the steep rocks. Our disappointment was big when a thick fog came in that afternoon and stayed all night while we (apparently...) rounded St Kilda. Only the chart plotter, radar and AIS showed us St Kilda that night, which means we will have to participate again in four years and have another go at it.
A funny by-effect of the fog was that the AIS signals of other boats became much more clear and we got an impression of how much we had caught up with them because of the still night. That was a big boost for our morale and we set up the chase! The next day the fog lifted, the sun came through and southwesterly winds made us hoist the spinnaker. We enjoyed fabulous sailing conditions. The wind slowly increased and veered a little, so that we pointed for Muckle Flugga, the north point of the Shetland Islands, in a wide bow. The spinnaker stayed on until the next day, when the winds got so strong that we shifted to gennaker on the boom. This went unexpectedly well. We surfed along and set one speed record after the other, the last one being 16,4 knots! It was a lot of fun. As winds approached 30 knots, the gennaker, too, had to go down and we shifted down to smaller and smaller sails. With a double reef in the mainsail and the staysail on we rounded Muckle Flugga, lighted up by in the sunset and in a washing machine of waves. Very beautiful and impressive, and it made up somewhat for our missing St Kilda! The wind had veered around with us, so we could continue on a broad reach down along the east coast of Shetland. It was blowing more and more and we were glad to be approaching the finish line. We sailed through another light night, and the sunlight started to come through as we tacked the final miles up on the Bressay Sound to Lerwick. We crossed the finish line at 04:18 (poor time-management) but felt that we had had a great and very enjoyable leg. It also showed on the result list the next day, for we had moved to the third place in our class!  Barra - [14-06-2010]  We are still enjoying Barra in the sun! All boats are moored in the bay and we have a beautiful view over the hills and islands around us. All boats use dinghies to row to the shore and shop, drink and dine. We met up with the lifeboat captain that rescued Vijaya during the 2006 edition of the Race, and got a portion of langoustines in return! It will be interesting cooking them tonight, poor things... but really good.We are leaving for Lerwick on the Shetland Islands tomorrow morning at ten. Predicted winds are unusually light for this sea area, so we hope to be able to keep going and enjoy a sunny trip with a good view of Saint Kilda, and arrive in time to meet up with the boats in the Bergen-Shetland Race. ps: view the newly uploaded pics  Kinsale to Barra - [13-06-2010] We started the leg from Kinsale to Barra at 3 o´clock in the morning. Not a time I recommend! We were able to follow the top light of ?Home of Jazz? during the early morning. The wind from North East gave us a speedy start and we passed the famous Fastnet Rock lighthouse around 10 in the morning, in the sunshine. Once we had turned northwards along the Irish west coast we had to beat upwards in rather nasty waves, which caused a lot of slamming of the boat and waves over deck, conditions that reduced life onboard to the very necessities: easy snacks for food, poor sleeping conditions, reduced number of toilet visits due to difficult conditions... This lasted until the following night, when the wind finally eased. Shifting wind directions gave us some trouble to pass the final Irish cape and it was a big relief when we finally were able to set course for Barra on the Hebrides. The wind and waves diminished and we both caught up with some sleep.
On the third day the wind was very shifty both in strength and direction. We ended up with wind from behind and sailed into the night with the spinnaker set. There was also time for some more culinary action and we had the premiere of fried potatoes on board the Vijaya. We expected a quiet last night towards Barra, but was not to be. Drizzle set in to make it a bit more gloomy. At one point Huib suddenly discovered that the spinnaker sheet was about to chafe through its final wire and a last-minute-action take-down saved us from new spinnaker trouble. Then, expecting a gradual wind shift from south to west, we continued for too long with the spinnaker on starboard. The shift didn´t come as expected and we finally had to gybe. Of course, as soon as we had gybed, the shift came, but very suddenly and the wind veered so much that we found ourselves on a reach for the final hours to Barra. Luckily the sun came out and gave us a beautiful view over Barra and the surrounding islands. We crossed the finish around 10 in the morning and found a place at a mooring in Castle Bay. It is very idyllic here, the only sounds are small waves against the hull and sheep on the hills. All race competitors brought little rubber boats to get ashore, which add up to the holiday atmosphere. The local meeting point is at the queue for the single shower at the hotel that is reserved for the race participants. Huib has already had a pleasant encounter with the lifeboat captain that saved him after he ?crashed? during the last RB&I race, and we are now bound for the pub to meet up again.  Set for the next start... - [09-06-2010] Still at the yacht club in Kinsale, checking the latest weather info and also the first results after the Dutch national elections that were held today... Interesting, both of them! As far as the weather is concerned, it looks like we´ll be beating upwards along the western Irish coast in 20-25 knots of wind from the north, later going down to 15 and maybe even less when we´re north of Ireland. We just hope it won´t fail us completely before we´re in Barra. It seems all the trackers are working now! They send an update every hour. And there is a brand new website for the race, check out www.rbandi.com! Time to shut down the computer and get a few hours of sleep before we have to start again at 03:06 tonight....  First leg accomplished! - [08-06-2010] The first leg from Plymouth to Kinsale was relatively short, but eventful. The good news was that the wind didn´t disappear during the first night and we were able to tack all the way to the Scilly Islands in a westerly breeze around 14 knots. We rounded Bishop Rock lighthouse in the early morning and turned right towards Kinsale, Ireland. The wind had backed to the south and we could set the spinnaker. That went well for a while ? but the fun did not last. See the pictures below! The breeze went up to over 30 knots and it was impossible to get the tangle down from the forestay. The best we could do was to wrap a rope around the lower half to stop the slamming, and continue to sail with a jib on the inner stay. Only by the end of the afternoon were we able to get the spinnaker down, after a long struggle.
After that we were able to set the Code 0 and continue the trip under a reach. During the last few miles the wind slowly faded away completely. Luckily, we had oars for that situation, and we rowed the last 1,5 miles to the finish. We crossed the line at 03:06 local time and went to sleep to Irish bird songs. Kinsale is sunny and hospitable today and we are attending our social obligations again :). Will start planning the next leg tomorrow!  Spinnaker Wrap !! and problem solved - [08-06-2010]   Our temporary fix, in order to continue our race, and the final SALVAGE of the battered spinnaker...  Counting down to the start - [05-06-2010] Last evening before we´re off for the first leg.... Starting to get a little nervous! The past days have been very nice and luckily we didn´t have that many jobs to do, so there was enough time to meet and chat with people. Yesterday there was a reception at the Yacht Club for all participants, sponsored by the Shetland Island tourist board (I learned that they´re not called ?the Shetlands?, but ?the Shetland Islands? ;) . That meant lot of good food and drinks from up north! They had even flewn in the local musicians, who put up a good party with violin music and made many people hop around on the dance floor, including several that surely weren´t planning to do so in advance :) . This morning we had the race briefing, explaining all procedures and locations. Everyone has received a race tracker from the committee. The tracker will send out the boat´s position every hour, and when we cross a start or finish line we can mark it so that you can see the time of passing. All the tracks can be followed on the regatta´s website, http://www.rwyc.org/oceanic/RBI10/rbi10containtrkr.asp . Tomorrow the start of the monohulls will go at 12:15, fifteen minutes after the multihulls. The weather on the first leg is expected to be rather light, even almost windless tomorrow night. We hope it won´last too long, as our boat likes a little more breeze. If all goes well we may be in Kinsale sometime around Tuesday night.  Plymouth - [04-06-2010] We left Amsterdam on Monday morning, motored through the canal to IJmuiden and then set sail towards the channel. We started with a nice sidewind, which disappeared in the course of Tuesday, when we had to motor for a while in a drizzle. Then, by the end of the day, we were able to hoist the spinnaker and sail it through the night. During Wednesday, the wind diminished again, but now the sun shone and we used the engine to reach Plymouth late that night, in the moonlight.
In the evening we had a nice fishy dinner at the bistro and then some drinks with other competitors at the club. It showed me again what a bunch of fruitcakes the participants in this kind of races are. There is not a boring person to be found, and I hope/guess we fit in here too :). We have to be a little careful though, because all the social stuff can drain your time before you know it. We still have a couple of jobs left to be done before the start on Sunday, so some self-discipline is needed! Today (Friday) we also want to plan/study the route for the first leg. Then in the evening we will have a reception for all competitors, and tomorrow morning a race briefing. Time flies until the start on Sunday at 12:00. PS A nice surprise was finding the ?Spirit? moored in the harbour this morning. They had had a good, but slow trip from Amsterdam, but all functioned well and they now know that they can trust their engine!  Last preparations for take-off - [30-05-2010]  What is it that makes leaving for a race always so stressful? We were planning to leave Amsterdam today, but so much stuff was still to be done that we decided to postpone it to tomorrow. Luckily we got moral support from the weather. The wind was blowing in gusts of over 30 knots inside the harbour, so we could feel less guilty about staying...
What we did today: buy fresh groceries (a lot!), find place for all the groceries, tidy and clean the boat, collect another anchor, put the dinghy and other stuff on board, Huib did a lot of work stuff that had to be finished, and I used the opportunity to drink coffee with my sister´s family.
 Twitter-like tracker messages - [26-05-2010] Regular position reports will be shown on the TRACKER page. Just implemented is the cool feature of adding short Twitter-like quick notes when sending the reports.  Qualifying - [22-05-2010] In order to qualify for the Round Britain & Ireland Race every team has to sail a non stop course of 300 nautical miles (around 550 km) non-stop. Huib and I planned to do this in the Ascension weekend. I flew down from Bergen on Wednesday afternoon, we did shoppings, some final preparations and sailed through the Noordzeekanaal from Amsterdam to IJmuiden, and all this made that it was almost 3 o'clock at night before we finally set out on the North Sea. I had been on Vijaya before, but this was the first time that I actually sailed her. With her aluminium hull, she is a little heavier than most modern day sailing boats, but you can see at once that she is made for racing. All ropes, blocks and winches are of a heavy quality. The deck layout is clear and simple. On the inside, the lack of doors gives an open feeling. She is steered by helm, not by wheel, plus of course a good autopilot. We set out for the Shipwash buoy close to the english coast, with a nice northerly breeze. It was a rather cold night, 7 degrees in IJmuiden, so we used all our standard winter sailing gear. When the sun rose it got better, but unfortunately the wind got less and less, so that we had to start the engine in the afternoon. All in all, it wasn't before the following night that we saw the lights of Harwich under a beautiful and starry sky. The wind had picked up when we jibed around the Shipwash buoy and set for a spot close to IJmuiden again. The next afternoon, the wind died almost completely. Not the best of sailing trips windwise, but it was definitely good to get to know the boat and each other better. We will have some more sailing time together on our way to the start in Plymouth.  A new adventure for Vijaya - [04-05-2010] Vijaya is being prepared for a new adventure: The Round Britain & Ireland Race 2010  |
[ELSE]
