Saturday, August 23, 2008

Going Fast at the J22 Worlds

(By Edgar Westerhuys) Fast is what we were today!! but lets not start with the sailing part.. first of all thanks for all cheers at the guest book and via email from all papas, mamas, friends, fans and other species who follow our daily moves! much appreciated and it looked like the wishes worked today!

Only one race sailed, after that the gradient wind and the thermal (sea breeze) started fighting but none of them won.. we were toasted at the water and were sent to shore after 3 hours of talking to other teams, laughing and swimming during waiting. It has not been more hot since we have been here, at least 90F - 32 celcius, incredible, TG this yacht club has a pool..! And TG the organisers keep on giving beer cans BudWeiser at the water (big thanks to them for this great event in all aspects!) to all competitors after sailing!

We had a good time and a lot of fun yesterday by the by in and one the way to East View’s HUGE shopping mall. In the beginning of the week we already had been to another mall and we had saved the phone number of the taxi driver who took us back to our camper. A really nice Big Black guy named Wesley with a great American Cadillac with white leather interior. Wes with base ball cap, golden chain around his neck and a Starbucks coffee cup in his cup holder. Not someone to play cards with and win from if you get me..:) So we called him again to go to East View. Talked about his favorite football club, we poshed about sailing here all the way from the Netherlands, about the drugs we take every day in Amsterdam and so on untill Bas suddenly asks Wesley the - today millions of time repeated - famous question “hey, have you seen my lipp stick, I lost it in your cab” ….. HAHA you should have seen his eyes.. Bas simply meant his labello factor3000 for at the water but lipp stick sounds a bit different) hehe

We are on shore also already famous for the Tshirt Marjolein is wearing saying ‘my team does it better’.. hehe.. we get a lot of questions… Our boat Rug Burn also has some history apparently because we got a number of times the question if we by any chance had found some dirty magazines inside the boat… no we didnt, but its something I have to check with Kevin the owner! Rug Burn - for all Dutchies who read this, American know - is referring to the geschaafde knieeen (burned) die je kan krijgen van een partijtje rollebollen op het tapijt (rug) toepasselijke naam komende uit het verderfelijke Amsterdam!!

Well, thats if for the less serious part. The one and only race from today was however also a fun one! We started close above the mid-line start-boat - yes there are 3 starting boats marking the line because the line simply has got to be very big for 105 boats - and had a good but sharp start we thought.. untill we heard our bownr on the radio/VHF, caguen la leche, bummer, back! TG we were close to the midline boat and could quickly re-start to try to catch up to at least some of the 105 boats. And that worked! I think we must have had the best boat speed of the field today; we went right and were helped by a right shift and a bit more wind at the right, crossing boats, ducking boats, staying alive in bad air, it all worked. We kept on going and were around 35th place at the first windward mark! Also downwind good speed, greatgreat leeward mark rounding where we passed at least 5 boats and again a tactically good second beat with again very good boat speed (I will take our settings back to NL for the Jabulani..) Finished as 28th, not bad with a start minutes later than the rest! Went up 1 place in the overall ranking: 26th.

Tonight its steak and fish + a Rock band so its gonna be fun again. Thats it for now, gotta take a dive as well.

JST standing by on channel 09.

oh, heres by the way the site from Tucker Thompson - sailed with Tucker at Mumm30s and at the ‘Exposure’ some years back - with some video footage of this weeks sailing: http://www.t2p.tv/guide/j22w08.php

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