Big gains ending in total wipe out: IJspegel 8

After our Mediterranean sailing experience two weeks ago the temperature difference did hit us quite hard. The sunny 16 degrees Celsius during the Primo Cup (Monaco) was a lot more pleasant then the freezing temperatures in Holland. After some practice runs on Saturday (15.3 knots), we were ready for the two IJspegel races on Sunday.

The wind was North-East, going North, and about 20 knots. Because of the increasing current the upwind legs went quite fast, and due to the strong wind our mumm30 flew easily back to the downwind mark.

After a reasonable first start, we lost a lot at the left hand side of the first upwind leg. Thanks to good boat handling at the marks and some better upwind tactics (right hand side) we got back and over the other mumm30 in the fleet; vanUden TUDelft. Sadly we lost control of the boat in the last downwind leg and made a total wipe out, we had to drop the spinnaker to recover. The boat was such a mess that re-hoisting wasn't possible, so we had to sit and watch the other mumm30 pass us by. At the end we came in at a 9^th place. Not really satisfactorily, but our gain of more then two minutes on the other mumm30 was impressive (loosing it again at the end was rather stupid).

We messed up our second start, but were able to hold on in the middle of the fleet. This time we were not able to get back to vanUden TUDelft, but we did made large gains on the other boats in the IMS-fleet, especially downwind. We had just enough wind to get the boat surfing off the waves, easily passing much bigger 40ft yachts. VanUden TUDelft won the race, and we scored a second place in the 13 boat fleet.

results: www.ijspegel.com

Team Triple P sailed with the following crew:

   1  Ernst-Jan van Housselt

   2  Joost Kroon

   3  Ko Stroo

   4  Gijs Gunneman

   5  Fezi Khaleghi

   6  Martijn Punt