Prize-giving was a blast. It was at an outdoor arena,
surrounded by stalls selling Dutch arty stuff , food and drinks. The party
kicked off with the DJ on stage calling forward the multitude of DLL staff,
who had been brought in for the weekend. They were all in blue tee shirts, looking like
the Smurfs.
It was like being at a rave. Everyone was dancing. Those on the dance floor were encouraged to jump up and down, as it
was an environmental dance floor, generating electricity from the
pounding. Rather neat.
Going on stage to receive applause for our first place
was just great. Ben's speech was very emotional, particularly as it was also his birthday. Afterwards, more dancing, then
the crews all went to an enclosed area for a barbecue. DLL had laid on superb
food, very impressive for so many people. I headed off to my hotel tired and
very happy.
I was staying in a little village outside of Den Helder,
which is in the farming area in the north of the Netherlands. It was a little
holiday. We stayed at a recreation park in the middle of nowhere. Even most of the taxi
drivers in Den Helder didn't know it, so it was a time to get away from it all
and get the much needed rest of the stop over. We also had a day cycling on the
island of Texel and a day sight-seeing in Amsterdam.
Race start was exciting as usual, but with added unwanted
excitement of having a horrible riding turn on the primary winch controlling
the yankey sheet, at one of the tacks just after race start. (A riding turn is where the rope on a winch gets tangled and effectivly locks itself in place.) The senior crew
on the boat jumped into action and sorted it out. Then we had 12 hours of upwind
sailing in mid 20s knots of wind; back to being on a bucking
bronco.
Unfortunately we then hit a wind hole which caused us to
drop from 2nd place down to last. We are now sailing down wind, having past a couple of
wind farms on the east coast of England. The light weight spinnaker is up and
we are back up the sixth. We are trimming like little badgers again.
The aim is to beat DLL in this race so we stay in third
place overall and keep our podium place.
Go Singapore!
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