Horizon Job

A Horizon Job - I love those words and the meaning of it. Difficult to translate into German though a straight one would read: "Horizont Job". I doubt that anyone in Germany, bar a couple of experienced sailors would get the message.
Anyway our second outing in the Wednesday night race (this week) with the Bull was a success. A big one. The conditions were just right. Wind from the east, 2-3 Bft. A shame that K. had dates out of town on this lovely evening, therefore Jan and myself decided not to take some inexperienced sailor on board. Instead the two of us sailed the boat alone. We took the old mainsail with an efficient reef, just in case.

Before the start we had the usual problems. Tackline over sheet or under? We messed a little bit around and at the end of the pre-hoist we even put the gennaker in the drink... Anyone who has done this knows that it is building immediately some kind of a sealed net. Full of water. Heavy. We got it sorted, both pulling hard on the halyard and the mast not breaking.

The starting line not well biased as usual, I put the boat between a bigger one (H-35) to windward and an X-79 and got trapped. Slowed down, backed the jib. Tacked and got off on port tack which was favoured. Had to grind down the leading X-79 after a while, which worked, than falling into another one. Two more tacks on lifts and we were the first boat in the narrow "channel" between the markers, where the water goes shallow to about 1,20m on the outside. Didn´t hit the ground and first to the weather mark. Gennaker up and we pulled away. Our maneuvers were so smooth that I even thought about the pleasure of this evening sail later in bed. It does not happen often. At the end we had a lead of 3min 4 sec. against the 2nd boat, a X-79. The list.pdf. The four seconds saved us 1st place on corrected time. Later at the bar the usual talk like: "next time we have to recalculate your YS". But that seems common everywhere and is not meant to be harsh. Friendly rivalry. Hopefully with some more competitors next Wednesday.