Fæderseilasen 2007

We went out to enjoy the sail, but with these guys I soon realised that despite the relaxed atmosphere, it was take no prisoners when opportunity presented itself.

Good omen- we won the warm up race round the bay on the wednesday - enough wind to sail in at 7pm, so looked good as far as reaching Drøbak by 9pm on the Friday under these stable weather patterns.

1103 boats signed up, sea breeze system forecast with the main draw coming from the Oslo 'volcano' basin. Anticipated finishing mid sat evening. 83 Nautical miles ahead of us.

Came up onto the line in a gaping hole 3/4 of the way to Akerbrygge. Engine off, we kept some air but were almost over by SWE 3- the match 38- however they didn't give us room for those above and we had a meter to go, otherwise a 2.5% scoring penalty was the order of the day! Bd form to have an OCS or a protest with this in front of us. But it was pretty clear from the start that this was a very serious class! (Lys *Racing* 36- smallest boat the jS9000 and mostly X362, 36.7s, Bavaria Matches and the new 34.7s looking semi pro!)

SWE 3 continued to like what we were doing along the west shore, cutting over Lysaker bay. But meanwhile it was actually paying for the X332's who I think started behind us to go South towards Nesodden- obviously the local sea breeze effect of the peninsual there was totally over-rulled by the bigger draw above Olso.

However just into my usual Snarøya sailing area it went very light. We stayed in the middel and took a big draw of wind to come back up into the top 15 of our class and leave the X332 behind.

Met office had the tide wrong though and the wind went earlier down the fjord, with a night breeze dropping down at about 9pm. We managed to get ourselves over into this breeze on the West side north of Håøya, but missed the trick that there was enough to creep east and catch vespers from the nesodden side and into the sound.

We managed to ghost out and towards the tip of Håøya. We could see a boat in breeze and heeled down the west "don't go there" side and took after it. Turned out to be a boozed up Maxi 1050, tacking side to side. But he showed us at least it was lifting like hell up the island side. This took us 3/4 of the way along and we drifted on a little tide towards the main sound again.

We came out in a WNW - NE puff system and a big tide running the gap at the west side. Behind us we could now see that we had done big damage to our class and all the boats in front- several hundred boats. We were infact ahead, and remained ahead of the VO70 'Ericsson 1". Once again with a hobie cat for company and now Hans Ulrik in his X99, a long haired guy taking helming duty.

SMS told us we were no 1 in class, although upon reflection I reckon "Dylan" was in front with maybe a couple of others given their finish times.

We elected to stay mid fjord in what looked like 'medstrømm' expecting to place ourselves for the main seabreeze-funnel system from the "firth of Oslo" sucking from the town area as mentioned- and this came in. Local effects east paid for only an hour or two with a big wind still area between the main draw and these shore line flickerings!

Now we sailed clean away from the fleet who were perhaps becalmed ? We maybe hit the edge of where it first "falls" because it was so hot that the system may have been very large. Later that night there was a lot of low pressure cloud formations being whipped around by a high wind- mayeb the jetstream...

Staying out did not pay- I was helming for about 3 hours and we were often a full knot down on one tack. SOG looked good but there was something fishy. The blue X332 had snuck out and they followed the west islands to stay out the tide and slipped up right into the Færder light rock infront of us. An x35 had come through us between the islands and was on it's way north to the beer tents already. I reckoned with a few other escapees with our mistaken 'go out' and that is seen in the 7 which finished.

The rock was at the very, very edge of the breeze and it lifted northover just at the worst time for us. A bad bit of tide forced us to piroet around the bloody stick and let a X412 through. Half an hour later and it was about 9.30, with 20 naut's ahead of us. We had a debate in a lull, but started to drive at 5 knts so damn the motor. This happened two more times, once with full packing under way, but we did one of my famous "bananas" keeping moving until a relatively strong night breeze fell south of Horten. Boat speed climbed suddenly to 7knts! the goal was in sight, abotu 3 miles north as we hit the shore line. We came a mile from it at 12:50 and it was windstill.

Poor sods us, we agreed it had been a bloody enjoyable sail and a huge effort for a scratch crew.
But not so poor as a smaller boat which was nearly on the line at 1am!!!!!

35 hours and over 80 miles for a race I said I'd only do once.


I'm coming back for more....!