Storm

The weather goes from bad to worse.
Yesterday, I skipped the Klipper race, because the weather report said there would be no wind all day. I decided to go today instead and experience sailing in some more windy conditions. I forgot to check the weather report before leaving home, but I had done so Friday. Today was supposed to be without any rain and with moderate winds. So, I woke up early, all excited for the race. I had my breakfast, got dressed and opened the door before I noticed the weather. It was raining heavily. Well, that's no problem I thought, and put on my sailing clothes.
I was in somewhat of a hurry to get to the train, but I was not nervous about catching it. I probably would have been if I had known that I would get on board only a few minutes before we left the station. Anyway, it worked out and I got seated next to two other sailors who were going to the Klipper race. They could inform me that yesterday had indeed been completely without wind. A few boats had completed the race, but most had not cleared the time limit. That meant they were not back until nine or half past nine in the evening from an all day distance race. Lucky I stayed at home...
In the train I had taken off my sailing clothes. I quickly realized the need to put it back on as I stepped out of the train. It was still raining hard, and it was much more windy than in Amsterdam. In my full dress again, I felt comfortable walking through the rain. Now, I just had to find Avanti in the huge harbor of Enkhuizen. You would think that a 32 metre, 2-masted Klipper would be pretty easy to find, but it wasn't. There were at least 40 other ships that looked like it. I had to find a spot with shelter from the wind to call Niels the skipper and ask for directions.
When I stepped aboard I met a lot of friendly sailors and got served some nice breakfast (second breakfast is always a winner). Entering the luxurious ship was a sharp contrast from the weather outside. It was nice and warm and dry of course. We all helped energetically with the preparations for sailing. We put a reef in the mainsail and carried some extra sails below deck. We let go of the mooring lines and almost sailed, when suddenly there was a lot of shouting back and forth in dutch. We still held on to the front mooring line and at first I thought that was the problem, but it wasn't. We were simply trying to get back into our spot again. That is actually quite a challenge with wind from the side, only one mooring line attached and just one propeller at the back. I certainly wouldn't want to try that landing. With a smaller boat you would pull the two boats together using ropes, but with these ships they always prefer to use the engines. That means putting a buoy in between the boats and then pushing against that until the boat turns into position. Scary. Anyway, we got back to our position and I learned that the race had been delayed for an hour. That was quite disappointing, but the worst thing was that predictions said the wind would increase even further, so there was almost no chance that we would go sailing. An hour later the race was cancelled.
At the time I got a little disappointed, I had come to race, but at the same time I thought it was a good decision by the race committee. The wind speed had at this time reached 6-8 Beaufort. That is way beyond hard wind. It's a storm.
When the race was cancelled there wasn't really any reason for me to stay, so I said goodbye and left the Avanti. I did a little walk around Enkhuizen and I'm sure it's a beautiful city, but it's really hard to go sightseeing in your full sailing clothes, in heavy rain and stormy wind. Also, it's a rather small city, the main attraction being the harbor as far as I know.
On my trip home I felt more and more relieved that we weren't sailing. I realized, that even when I thought we would be sailing I was not preparing myself to sail as good as possible. I was preparing myself to make sure I stayed safe, while we were sailing. This is very unusual for me, as I am very comfortable on a boat, but there is something about that Klipper that scares me. Everything is too heavy for you to move by yourself. You cannot lift the sails, pull the sheets or basically stop anything from moving. Well, at least that's what I thought when I prepared myself. I never got to try and in a way I feel just fine about that.
So, instead of an exciting day of racing I spent most of today at home learning how to instantiate a display class in Flash (very basic, but it still took hours of frustration)...