Le Havre, 6 June 2010
After a rechecking our food and water supply the docks were left at 10 o'clock to start the 105 mile offshore race to Cherbourg and back. The weather forecast predicted light and unstable winds; it was going to be a long race.
As with every race, a good start is crucial; we tacked right after the start in the light breeze and took the lead together with Oman Sail, Nouvelle Caledonie and Dunkerque. In the first hours the unstable breeze shuffled the fleet but we managed to stay in the top five. The sea breeze kicked in during the afternoon and caused some very drastic wind shifts; in a few seconds we had to drop the spinnaker and go full upwind. We headed out to sea while most of the fleet went for a course close to shore. That turned out to be the right choice. Unfortunately we saw the leading boats getting away fast. Our mistake cost us a lot; we had dropped back to the tail of the fleet.
During the leg to Cherbourg we pushed hard to beat Lagardere and TPM, while the shifty winds requested a lot of sail changes. During the sunset we peeled to the masthead and overtook some boats. We chased Les Rapetous for several hours during the night and finally overtook them during a gybe duel in a nasty thunderstorm.
The last miles to the finish we stalled in the unstable winds. Some of the boats we had overtaken throughout the night did a better job navigating the thunderstorms and finished only a few boat lengths in front of us. Although we had pushed hard on boat speed and handling some of our strategic decisions had not turned out very well. We finally finished in a 12th position.
Stay tuned!
David
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