First race of the season, Paascup 2012

Always very exciting to head for your first race of the sailing season. Even after all those years racing, I still feel nervous right before a race. As soon as the 5 minutes starting sequence begins tough, the focus is back.

Our club (with a new fantastic location this year, check: www.vvwheist.be) always aims to hold the very first race of the year and all the sailors always hope for nice warm spring weather. This year we got lucky! Sunny and not too cold. Hip hip hurray for a drysuit! We even had a nice turnout of both C1 (F16 and F18 cats) and C3/C4 boats (Hobie 16 & Dragoon). In total 14 boats, very good for a race this early in the season.

Wind: 3-4 BFT, NE, small waves. Temperature 12°C and water temperature 8°C, chilly. 3 races with 2 laps each for the C1 class. Traditional triangle with Start, Upwind, Dogleg, Gate, Upwind, Dogleg, Gate and Finish. 

Short races made us very aware of the fact that we didn’t train enough during winter. But this way we never felt the cold! It was very exciting to race with 3 other Falcons,  3 youth teams who are all very ambitious, very energetic and very keen to win. Furthermore they all just had a one week training with coach Sebbe Godefroid. Gill was confident we could beat them because of our experience, I wasn’t so sure. 

It made for a very close game between the 4 of us, switching places, looking over our shoulders a lot to see where the others were. Also Annouck and Gilles on their F18 Wildcat were to be held an eye on, especially in the downwind runs. 

After 3 races these were the results for the C1:

1/ Falcon Youth Team 111 – Philip Hendrickx & Gaetan Bols

2/ Falcon BEL 666 – Gill De Bruyne & Kathleen Vandenbulcke

3/ Falcon Youth Team 222 – Arnout Victor & Klaas Victor

4/ Falcon Youth Team 333 – Anton Coppens & Filip Olyslaeger

5/ F18 Wildcat – Annouck Phillipron & Gilles Tas

6/ F18 Cirrus – Ivan De Pauw & Luc Maertens

7/ F18 Wildcat – Annelies Bolle & Wim Braeken

Falcon Youth Team 111 did an excellent job, sailing their sail number: 1 – 1 – 1. We stuffed up in the last downwind of race 1 ending with a 4. Last 2 races we sailes a 2 and 2. We had a great time on the water, with lots of excitement, lots of to do’s for this season (for me: be quicker, don’t fiddle so much before going out in trapeze, don’t enter the boat on your ass! (use your knees), get the kite up quicker!....) and a nice barbeque and party in our new club afterwards. And 2 large bottles of Duvel to celebrate! J

We have made a movie about this race, with our new Go Pro, very cool to watch, we’ll post it on here soon!