After our anchor watch at midnight I was able to sleep for more than 6 hours and felt well refreshed. It was finally the day to do the race and we all were quite excited about it.
We pulled up the gigantic anchor, we did that as a team, all pulling together forming a line and it was much better than the back-breaking work of the other day, even with a much bigger anchor. While we motored to the race start point we started preparing the boat for the race, which included making sure that all our bilges were super-empty. I spent a long time in the lazarette with a bucket and sponge, making sure that it was all dry.
After a visit from the race committee to make sure everything was ok (we received them with coffee, tea and cookies) we practiced a Le Mans start. In this type of start all boats line up with the help of the one who is leading, just with the main sail up and the head sails ready to be hoisted. All the crew must be aft of the coffee grinders. At race start the crew jumps forward to raise the head sails as soon as possible and we all continue racing with the same heading for 10 minutes, with no sail changes allowed. After these 10 minutes you are free to change course or do any evolutions.
During this practice start, since we had enough people for all roles, I remained at the back of the boat, recording everything and taking pictures. The start went really well, it was very exciting even if it was just a practice, everyone jumped to their positions and the head sails were up in no time. After several minutes we only managed to be fifth, we reflected on our performance and thought that the problem was that the head sails were not properly trimmed and should have been eased.
We then did a normal race start practice and immediately after that the real race start itself. In this type of start there is just a line which is formed between the race committee boat and a mark (a cardinal buoy in this case) and there is a start time and your goal is to try to cross this line and start sailing as close to this starting time as possible. All while trying to avoid all the other boats surrounding you. Pretty complex and pretty exciting too!
I did participate in these race starts, taking care of one of the backstays. It was incredibly exciting, with lots of things going on at the same time. We passed the start line in second position and after a few minutes we were in the leading pack of yachts, in third position.
About an hour later it was my turn to be on the helm and we slowly gained on the boat that was second until we took that place. We also noticed that the boats in front and behind us did not have any reef in the main, so we shook our reef while managing to stay in second position. Really satisfying!
During the rest of our afternoon watch the wind remained very constant and we were sailing upwind with almost no changes. I went to the bow to call trimming but there was nothing to call, the wind did not change at all and the helming was really good so the yacht was performing at its best.
Finally, just before the end of our watch the wind died a little, so we decided to exchange our Yankee 2 for the Yankee 1. We did a racing head sail change, where you prepare the new sail before dropping the old one so that the yacht is without a head sail the minimum time possible. I was at the bow and handled everything with the help of Maren, it all went really well and I was proud of a perfect evolution.
We then went down below to enjoy a well earned rest. At the end of this time we reached the coast of France where we rounded our next mark. Then it was the time for a little of downwind sailing, so Ineke's team hoisted the spinnaker. Then Nano told us that it was very interesting on deck. The boat that was third had caught up with us and they were just behind us. I got some really god pictures while they slowly overtook us. They were using the Code 2 spinnaker and we were using the Code 3 because Ineke was still not sure that there had been no damage during the kitemare of the previous day.
Just before watch change we reached the next mark and there were five minutes of high level activity: hoisting the yankee, dropping the spi, rounding the mark, tacking and hoisting the staysail. All perfectly executed by Ineke's team. The boat that had just overtaken us decided not to tack yet and that seems to have been a bad decision because when they finally tacked they ended up behind us.
I was too excited to get any sleep, so I remained on deck taking pictures of the sunset and enjoying perfect sailing, waiting for our 10:00pm watch.
