Krystal in Amsterdam
Well it has been one week since I left Australia for sunny Holland. I have been spending the past week trying to recover from jetlag and get myself ready for racing at my first event in Scheveningen at the North Sea Regatta. I have been staying with Renske and Pim my Dutch friends exploring Amsterdam, Ann Frank House and also there famous football stadium where I was able to see the making of the stage for the Toppers concert. The dutch are crazy for this concert where they dress up in everything over the top and enjoy sing-a-long songs…hmm interesting.
After a few days I was all ready to go out sailing but my boat was waiting in Rotterdam on strike till some important paperwork from Schenker was worked out. We were meant to be unpacking the boat 5 days ago but it turned out that we had to unpack it the morning of day one of competition. Fletch was doing all the hard work at the container while I was at the regatta site just getting registered. It was always going to be a tight race to get to the start line on time. Luckily the gods were looking down on us and the racing was postponed on shore for 1.5hours …we made it will 20min to spare.
Race one finally got underway after many general recalled starts, I was doing well sitting in the top5 when a huge fog bank rolled in. It was like a Laser Ghost town very spooky, racing was then abandoned for the day as I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.
Day Two was a better day with more wind of 8-10knots and the fog held off enough for us to get two races in. I finished off with some ok results, 8th and 6th so not a bad start. Just looking forward to some more big fleet racing tomorrow.
You can follow the regatta at http://www.nsr.nl/