More news in the Delta

The Delta (DUT weekly paper), keeps writing about the Solution Too sailing team, in the results of this week sporting the reporter writes about our performance.

Click here to see all the articles written in the Delta about the Solution Too sailing team.

In the monthly dutch magazine “Zeilen“ there is also written about the 1000 miles, but the Solution Too sailing team isn’t even mentioned.

Greetings,

Kasper

Sailing home….

Yes, the fact that I write this already gives away that we survived the sail back . After our excursion to the Hardangerfjord, we continued on to Stavanger. The weather still nice, but the winds light, it took us two full days to get there. A little stop underway in a place without a shower or a toilet had us leave early again the next morning. On the Boknafjord, between Haugesund and Stavanger, the wind suddenly increased to a force 7, so we could practise making a reef for the first time (something that would come in handy later). By the time we had finished the second reef, the wind had completely disappeared and we could take it out and start the engine immediately . We arrived in Stavanger on a rainy evening, but the warm shower at Stavanger Seilforening made up for a lot.

The next two days, we spent mainly in Stavanger. We did some shopping and visited the Oil Museum. On Monday, we waved goodbye to Maartje, who went on exploring Norway without us. The three of us left (Kasper, Ivo and Anne) would sail the boat back home. We were to leave on Tuesday. The weather forecast was good, except for a slight wind increase on Friday afternoon to 25 knots, but by then we would probably be in already.

Because of a lot of things to do (buy food, check internet, try to shower etcetera…) we didn’t leave the harbour before 17:30. The wind was light and, of course, from the direction we were to sail to (south). The story of our life! Luckily, we were allowed to use the engine now, otherwise we might still have been at sea. Almost the whole of Wednesday, the engine and autopilot moved us home, with some sunshine to go along with it. In the night, some kind of animal, probably a bat, had a rest in our mainsail.

The next day, the wind picked up a little, and suprise! not even from the south. That day, we had the laziest day of all, still steering on the autopilot, enjoying the sun and warmth and fishing and reading magazines. Three dolphins stopped by to check out the boat, but left quickly again, probably due to a busy schedule. Another big fish passed by the boat later in the day.

During the night, the wind started to pick up to a force 5 and turned back south. We still got some sleep, but the waves started growing and the wind slowly increased. The forecast was still force 6, with the maximum at the end of the afternoon. Unfortunately, the wind didn’t stop at that. The Navtex received a warning for force 7, and later also 8, which is exactly what we got. The waves built up to huge sizes and we took down the jib and reefed the mainsail three times. In this way, the boat was OK to handle, but it and we got very wet with all the waves. We started counting back the miles to go before our destination and closest harbour, Vlieland, but starting at around 80, this took us about 15 hours. We didn’t very much enjoy this last part, although the boat did well and still was light to steer. But eating and sleeping became difficult. Even though we managed to keep one bed dry, lying inside and hearing all the sounds and feeling the boat shake was not very comfortable. When it got dark it was no longer possible to see the waves, so they came as surprises. At the same time, we had to keep a good lookout, as we were crossing the busy traffic lanes north of the Wadden Islands. Only after midnight, during our last ten miles, the wind slowly started decreasing. The entrance to Vlieland was safe and welcoming, and finally, at 02:30, we arrived in the harbour. We were very relieved to be there! We took a shower, a beer and then managed to make three more-or-less dry sleeping places for a deserved rest.

A nice surprise the next morning was finding the Tavare (another 1000mile competitor) only 50 metres further on. We shared our stories over a good breakfast together. In the afternoon, we both proceeded to the Afsluitdijk (Kornwerderzand), a very nice trip with a good wind from the west. Then we split up and the Solution Too continued to Medemblik, where Kasper’s father received us with a wonderful dinner. The next day was spent again on cleaning and drying, and on Monday we spent the last day on our sweet little boat, as we arrived at its home port in Zaandam and had to give it back to its owner.

We had a great time, both during the race and afterwards! Although it is wonderful to sleep in a bed where you have enough place to draw up your knees again, we will miss the boat. A lot of things together made this adventure to the great experience it was: the race, our own team and delivery crew, the other participants, the beautiful places we visited, the great hospitality and company from friends underway, the superb support from friends and family at home, and just in general, the feeling of being completely out of our ordinary lives. We will need some time to process all experiences! What will follow out of it, and what challenges will come next, we will see in the future.

Holi- holiday :D

The Solution Too is on its way back to the Netherlands! We are hopping down the coast. The team has been doubled to four, thanks to Maartje and Ivo who flew in from Holland. In the past days, we have been fishing on mackerell and salmon, admired a glacier, picked cherries, visited Hellesøy Verft, celebrated the 5-year anniversary of ToneDesign, visited a waterfall, and of course sailed a lot in between, through beautiful fjords and past a lot of little rocky islands. The sailing is now done in Holiday modus, which means more focus on food, sleep and social things than before. Nice ! A bonus to our holiday feeling is hearing that the weather in the Netherlands is terrible, while it is still mostly sunshine here .

Tomorrow or the day after, we plan to start on the crossing to the Netherlands, so that we will arrive there around Friday evening.

Here are some holiday pictures. Enjoy!

Anne

Some pictures from Bergen-Shetland

Here are some pictures from the leg Bergen-Shetland. It started with very little wind and a lot of sunshine.

Back in Bergen

After two and a half intense days of playing the tourist and partying Norwegian style on the Shetlands, we started our return race on Sunday at 12:00. Quite a busy start with all participants starting simultaneously on the Bressay Sound, between the Mainland of Shetland and the island Bressay. We were the smallest boat in a fleet of fifty now! We took it easy and chose the high side of the field to avoid being run over by all the bigger boats. This also gave the photoboat a great opportunity to capture us with only the rocks in the background (we hope to obtain the results soono). The downside of it was that those rocks took our wind at times, but luckily our boat doesn’t need much.

When we had rounded the southern tip of Bressay we could set course to our only waypoint for this regatta: Marsteinen lighthouse, at 91 degrees and 184 nautical miles. The wind was northerly all the way, varying between 10 and 15 knots for most of the time. Pretty soon all the big boats had disappeared out of sight; with this kind of wind speed, our short boat can’t compete with the bigger ones anymore. But there were still some smaller boats left to compete with, which is a lot more stimulating than competing in an empty sea. We did our best to trim the sails to their optimum and catch the waves in favourable points. Unfortunately, the partying at Shetland took some of its toll, which made it hard to keep our eyes focussed on the sails and the meters as the night got (a little) darker and the competitors more distant. Some less-than-optimal steering was the result. Also, my (Anne’s) eye had become infected, so I had only one contact lens left which made me feel very piraty but not very good at observing meters and other ships.

Still, we held several boats on the horizon all the way and made our fastest average boat speed of all legs (6,6 knots), due to the stronger winds. At the end, the wind suddenly accelerated and we started surfing over the waves with boat speed up to more than 9 knots. Nice!

At 16:37, we crossed the finish line in Norway as one of the last boats, right behind our friends from “Tavare”. The weather conditions were not optimal for us during this race, but rumours go that we still obtained a third position in the smaller Doublehanded class. We will find out at the prize giving ceremony later this afternoon. Love getting prizes!!

On the other hand, it was a bit of a shock to realize, once over the finish, that this was the end of the 1000 Mile race. It has been so very cool in the past weeks to be in this adventure together, with our boat and all the other competitors. Tonight, the only remaining Norwegian competitor of the 1000 Mile has invited us all to his house for a dinner, so we will enjoy each other’s company for the last time before spreading out over the world again. In October, the 1000 Mile prize giving ceremony will serve as a reunion.

The photo camera to laptop connection is not participating right now, but we hope to be able to upload some pictures soon.

Well, we have to be off and sail the boat to the prize giving place!

Regards from two tired but content team members

Another article from the Shetland-Bergen site

In the Double Handed Class, (only 2 onboard), the Dutch yacht “Fandango with Kees de Walle, and Bjart Jan Ijzerman one first place. The competition was very fierce in this Class, with the first 7 competitors to cross the Finish Line, with hardly an hour between them. Western Norways “own yacht” – “Embla 3″ with Helge Ivarsøy, and Jon Amtrup, held a good position by coming in 3rd in the Double Handed class. (Class 1). 43 yachts completed the course over the North Seas, of which 15 were Double Handed class. After a short weekend rest the Race continues on Sunday morning, 11am local time, when the return journey over the North Sea from Lerwick Boat Club starts. Estimated time of arrival in Norway, depending on wind/weather condition wil be Monday, late afternoon, evening

News item from the Shetland Bergen website

Hereby a news item copied from the Shetland Bergen website

oaring Forty was the first yacht over the Finish Line in Lerwick, timed at 19.03 (Norwegian time). However, this does not mean that she has won the first leg of the Visit Bergen Shetland Races 2007.
Light winds over the North Sea to Lerwick resulted in a much later time of arrival for the competing yachts. The fastet yacht used more than 30 hours on the crossing. The remaining competitors, did not arrive until late afternoon, onwards into Friday evening. “Hanna Marie” was the first yacht to pass Oseberg Platforms, and at which point she was the leading yacht in her LYS class, whilst the “Solution Too” just clinched the leadership in the double handed class. Due to the extensive range of competing yachts, each one has a handicap to determine the speed and time, which will be calculated out in order to find the winning yachts of each class. For example, Roaring Forty used ca 30 hour of sailing time, but after the handicap calculation, her “adjusted time” was noted as 1 day (24hours), 12 hours and 44 minutes. The result lists available in Shetland and on the web site are unnofficial. The offical result list will be released some time during Saturday23rd June.

Finishing of leg 2

It has been a while ago when we finished the second leg of the 1000-miles but there where so many things to do here on the Shetlands that our report of the second leg took a while. But for all the people who are waiting at home for our reports and our stories; here it is By the way thank you for all the comments, posts, emails and SMS, it is a great feeling that so many people are following us from the shoreside and behind their desks. Every time I switch on my phone new wishes and curious questions are displayed on my screen. It is great!

But now the report of the second leg; the day before the start we sailed from Bergen to a small harbour more in the reach of the starting line, our boat isn’t very fast on engine so if we have to travel the 20 miles from bergen to starting line on Wednesday morning we should be leaving very early which isn’t one of our favourite things. From the small harbour to the starting line it would be 5 miles so if we left the harbour at 11 AM we sure would be in time for the start 13.00, but at 11.00 we discovered it was still 12 miles till the starting line, so again we had problems with reaching the starting line in time. Full power to the small engine, and luckily at the 10 minutes signal we reached the line, hoisted the main sail, at the 5 minute signal we hoisted the Genoa 1 and pulled out the engine and we started searching for the start line and the right position on the line. All together this seems again a good starting procedure and we passed the line with speed and on a pretty good location. We almost had a protest situation with the Viyaya; we were sailing with our sails on port and they thought they can pass in front of us but it was this close that we’d better ducked a little bit to avoid a collision. And appointed a round at the bar instead of at the racing track

During the start the winds were very light, and also the hours behind the start were with very light winds and a lot of sun. Very good weather for our light boat, and so we can sail along with the larger heavier boats like the Xinia, Jager, Telica and Viyaya. It was fun to sail among the other boats, this in contrast with our experiences with the first leg, where we haven’t seen one of our competitors during the 5 days. Till midnight the wind stayed a little bit blowing and we could keep up speed, during my shift the wind completely disappeared and the sails were just clapping in the wind, so i dropped the genoa and waited till the wind starts blowing again. When there were two knots of wind our boat started accelarating again and till the Oseberg platform we could keep up speed and at the Oseberg we have to change our course and we can hoist our spinnaker for at first a high reach and later a more downwind course.

At the Oseberg platform we were a few lengths behind the Jager from Dick Koopmans, so we knew we sailed well, but when he hoisted his gennaker he was heading away from us really fast and a lot of other larger boats were passing by under spinnaker. The boat wasn’t fast enough downwind to keep up with the rest and also with this spinnaker it was very difficult reaching. The wind speeds were varying between 5 and 15 knots and so the boat speeds were varying between 2 and 8 knots.

Thursday evening/ friday morning at 3.00 AM we started entering the Lerwick Harbour area and tried to reach into the harbour area and we finished at 3.40 AM.

When we arrived at the mooring Huib from the Viyaya was friendly inviting us for a late night drink. And we could tell our first stories to him and he was able to mention our scoring on the second leg, we passed the Oseberg platform as the first 1000-mile competitor and when we arrived at the finish we were in the seventh place. So again we had a first place for a very short time

Friday we strawled around the city of Lerwick and at 17.00 there was a large prize giving. On the site of the 1000-miles all the results are published. And so the stage was filled with 1000 miles competitors during the prize giving. The Xinia-ladies got the first price for the overall results till now, the Embla 3 for a first place in their dual-handed class (we got a third place, and also a price ), and in the other dual handed class the Fandango fell in the price. Helge from the Embla and Kees from the Fandango were qualified to sail on saturday in the Lasers.

Today we made a trip around the island and watched the Laser sailing in our own spectator boat.

Tomorrow we start heading to Bergen again, the current wind predictions are 20-30 knots of wind from the North direction so a lot of work to do for us, and hopefully we can keep everything a little bit dry inside.

Greetings and till the next time in Bergen again,

Kasper

START No2 Bergen-Lerwick

At this moment Solution is preparing for the start at 13:00. Kasper and Anne expect to finish Friday morning. This time the tracer functions. Also their position will four times a day be published on www.shetland-race.no.

First video’s on You Tube

Hi there,

I’ve been busy again with uploading the videos made during sailing and now the first video’s are online. If you click here you can see the first one, and the rest is uploading right now.

On the 1000 mile site our first video is also uploaded.

Bye bye,

Kasper