The IJspegel winter series had a kick-off meeting on Saturday the 14^th of October. We made a toast on the coming winter series with some old friends from last winter. The day before Joost and Ko brought the boat back to Scheveningen from Zierikzee , where John Joosse re-painted the bottom of the boat. The mumm30 was lifted in the water on Saturday morning, and after some practice rounds on the water we were ready for the first IJspegel on Sunday.

The main goal of this years winter series is to fill the last remaining places on our team. This weekend Patricia of the Belgium mumm30 Summumm (pit) and Mike of DelftChallenge (genua trim) joined the team. Joost moved from the safe heaven of the pit to the mainsail and the rest of the crew remained on their standard positions.

The first race we started dramatically; due to a total lack of concentration we missed most of the start signals and were about 30 seconds late. We fought our way back in the fleet and finally finished 8^th.

The second race we were sharp on the start, but the line was just 2 meters too short for the time. So we crossed 5 seconds too early and had to sail back. Again we started the race at the back, and again we got back to the pack, finishing a 8^th place again.

During both races we made have a lot of small mistakes: over sailing the mark, dropping a bit to late, hoisting to soon, missing a mark, all stuff like that. These mistakes were caused partly by (new) people on new positions, but also by a lack of concentration of all the crewmembers. A big mess up didn’t occur, which was positive considering the strong breeze on Sunday. And Joost also experienced how much work it takes to do the mainsail.

Photo by: Leo Eggink ~ IJspegel.com