We started at 1800 on Friday in very little wind and that quickly faded to nothing and we proceeded to drift for some time. Finally at midnight we exited the channel and started to pick up the little wind that was out in the open water. The leading boats picked this up earlier and it only took them three hours. Once making steady progress we put into effect a loosely defined 2 hour watch 1 on 2 off which lasted till the morning.
When I got up at 0600 we were roughly half way across the gulf of Bothnia. We finally made it to the first rounding lighthouse at about 1400 and that was cause for celebration. After the wind dropped out it had progressively built overnight and so had out boat speed with our average speed going from 0 to 5 knots by the time we made the mark.
After some short debate about how to operate the chart plotter we worked out the next heading and I proceeded to instruct a lesson on how to fly a spinnaker. As I said when I started ‘Flying the spinnaker is easy, the tricky part is getting it in the air and back down’. Putting it up went fairly smoothly and even gibing was pretty good considering Dan and Doris had limited experience with a spinnaker. However getting it down to round the second lighthouse was not as slick as I would have liked. No one went overboard and apart from foolishly giving myself some rope burn, everyone was fine, we did broach though and put a small hole in the Jib.
Once setting a new course back to the harbour we changed helms a couple of times before I did a long stint to get us back to the channel. Although very different from the boats I would usually be sailing by myself there was still something very exciting about sailing a 31 foot boat in 1m waves at between 5-8 knots. I eventually found a good grove and was managing to keep out average speed at nearly 6 knots, surfing at up to 8 at times.
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We re-entered the channel about 0130 on Sunday morning, unfortunately one (maybe a pair) of channel marker lights were out and after sailing a bit wide of one obstruction we sailed straight into some fishing nets. With the wind from behind us we did not manage to find a position for the sails to get us out, after loosing our paddle overboard trying to pick up the net to drag ourselves out we reverted to starting the engine to pull ourselves off. We’d already used all of the battery power and had earlier hijacked the remaining starter battery as a power source for the Navigation lights. What ever we’d done the engine didn’t like and it would not turn Thus making it look like we might spend the night in a fishing net. Shortly after this realisation there was a freak 150 degree wind shift and reacting quickly we were able to sail back out.
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Dan then spent half an hour playing with the electrical circuit to try and get power back and avoid having to dock with the sails. I steered us back while Doris spotted the path from the bow. After checking the engine would run again Dan sailed the last half an hour and we crossed the finish line at 0305 (we later found out the leaders finished about 2230).
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We shared some celebratory beers with the leftovers of the fleet and crashed well after the sun had risen. Today we tidied the boat, got cleaned up and had a late lunch in dispersed with large periods of laziness. It turns out that although last across the line by a couple of hours we finished 10th on Handicap, had we been 4 minutes quicker we would have been 9th (too bad about the fishing net). It’s not second like the boat I was on last year, but we were quite pleased.
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