Saturday evening was a festive event organized for the sailors. At six o'clock the event plan said free fish. I tagged along with the rest of the crew to a big building. I think it must be used for storage of boats in the winter, but today it was used for the gathering of the sailors. As promised, there was free fish, and lots of it. There was nothing else to eat with the fish except for white toast bread, but the amount of fried fish was impressive. We had some and a beer, but we left quickly again. We would have dinner aboard the Klipper together with the Verwisseling crew.
Later we returned to the winter-garage/sailor's pub to party with live music. The crowd consisted of Frisian people of all ages and us, students from Amsterdam. The band was very loud and I thought that was a bit out of a place, but everyone else seemed to like it. Despite the mixed crowd, it quickly escalated into a wild party with lots of dancing and drinking. I never really got into the mood for it, but curiously watched all the crazy things happening around me. To me, students drinking and doing crazy stuff is one thing, but old people... that's something else. My favorite moment was when an old guy almost went crowd-surfing, at least he got carried around all over the dance floor. The most crazy thing that happened was a 'mosh pit'. The others had expected it, but I was clueless as to what was going on. I've since Googled it and found out that it is a dance that belongs to the hardcore scene. According to Wikipedia it is intended to be 'energetic and full body contact'. In practice this means running into each other and aggressively pushing others into each other. Absolute madness. We also did a few less crazy things like dance head-and-shoulders-knees-and-toes and polonaise...
Sunday morning I couldn't wait to go sailing. I was excited about my role and sailing with all the big boats in general. There was no mist this morning, but there wasn't a lot of wind either. When the wind came, it came from West. That is a much better direction, as it is along the lake, so we could sail a classic up-down course. In the first race we wanted a start near the starboard buoy. We sailed downwind on the right side of the starting line and positioned us for the start. Niek, the helmsman today, and I both remembered the horrible start from yesterday, so we had agreed to start at speed no matter what. He is a very cautious sailor, so I had to push him a bit to start sailing towards the line early. We let one boat slip past us to leeward and suddenly we were in a line of boats racing towards the start. There was still 2 and a half minutes to go, when the positions were completely locked in. In the end we crossed the line about 20 seconds after the sound and sailed right past the starboard buoy. Although a little later than ideal, it was a perfect start for us. We generally have low boatspeed, so getting free wind is difficult in the start. The starboardmost start ensured that we had free wind for the first part of the upwind leg. During the upwind Niek and I got a feel for each other in our new positions. I think he learned not to ask, when he had in fact already decided and I learned that I had to be subtle to get what I wanted. Niek was still a tactician of heart, so he did not leave much room for me to make decisions, but that didn't stop me from doing a good job and enjoying every moment of it. The thing about being a tactician is, that you get to see everything. Not only that, you are expected to see everything. It is perfect, because that is what I really like about the race, experiencing all of the boats, not just focusing on performing small tasks to perfection.
At the top mark we got into an interesting situation again. We had the choice between tacking below a competitor or going a long way around it. By this time, I had a fair understanding of how high we could go towards the wind, and I predicted that we could reach the mark even if we tagged below him. I knew from yesterday that Niek would always go behind, so I had to say something if I wanted us to tack. So I yelled from the front of the ship (that's how we communicate, if we want to say something more complicated than we can do with hand signals) that I thought we could make the mark. I got a "you better be right" in return, but he did the tack. The competitor passed us, as we lost most of our speed in the tack and only slowly accelerated inside the turbulence from his sails, but we still made it. We didn't even have to push the board as hard as I knew we could if it got tight. I didn't expect an applause and didn't get one, but I felt quite smug that I had just saved us several boatlenghts. On the downwind we did poorly, no matter how you look at it. We had trouble with the jib trim, positioning and even steering towards the next mark. At the bottom mark we got into a really bad situation. There were a lot of boats rounding the mark in a tight row. There were all doing too big curves around the mark, but at least they maintained good speed. We wanted to do a somewhat narrower curve around the mark and we had right-of-way inside the rounding zone over one leeward boat. Unfortunately, our turn became much too wide. I'm not sure exactly what happened at the helm, but the result was that the boat behind us decided to show his dissatisfaction with our poor rounding of the mark almost colliding with our leeward side near the back of the boat. The resulting pushing with legs to avoid real collision turned our boat away from the wind and made the rounding even worse. We ended up in the turbulent wind of the whole row in front of us, so I suggested a quick tack. That almost became a big mistake, as we tacked extremely slowly and almost got hit before we could claim right of way from being on starboard tack.
The second race was less eventful, as we failed the start and therefore quickly ended up behind the main group. I think my tactical guidance was good, but Niek suddenly got scared 30 seconds before the start and decided to stop the boat. He thought we were above the line, but I confidently told him there were two more boatlenghts to go. He reacted and we started sailing again, but the damage was done and the other boats were on top of us. We couldn't regain our speed in their turbulence and didn't accelerate before we tacked away and crossed the line on port tack. At the top buoy we did the same maneuver as last time again showing the others where the lay-line is, and again I think I was the only one who appreciated that. On the downwind we relaxed a little too much and almost got hit by one of the leading boats on its way upwind. That was embarrassing, as it was my responsibility to predict possible collisions. We did a (too) big evasive maneuver and avoided collision.
After the races everyone went home in different ways. Some would sail Elizabeth back to her home harbor further north in Friesland. Some would go by car (Porsche) and some went by public transport. Me and one other went with the Klipper Avanti across the Ijsselmeer to Enkhuizen. The captain of the Avanti is a previous Orionis member and also the helmsman of the Verwisseling Skûtje. That is how we were allowed to stay in the beautiful ship for the weekend. This night there was no wind at all, so the sea was blank as a mirror. The sunset was beautiful and so was the ship, even without sails. I would have loved to go by sail and so would the others, but without wind it wasn't an option. Instead they offered me to come back next weekend and sail a race in the Klipper! I couldn't resist that, so I immediately told them yes. Next Saturday I'll get to see it set all sails and race against other really big boats!
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