That was quite something - I've never seen so many catamarans in one place! 190 boats starting for a reaching course really teaches you the meaning of clean air. We got a fairly poor start, and by the time that we'd luffed our way over to the "overtaking lane", the boats that had been just a few lengths in front of us on the start had twin-wired their way to the horizon.



Proof that I was there. Behind you can see Hans adding some finishing touches to NED1111. There are some interesting new features on this boat, some of which will be standard on European Blades.

We had some good close racing amongst the F16s. We caught a glimpse of Geert early on, but he got away, leaving us swapping places with Hans and Jaap all the way up the outbound leg. We never saw Bard on the course, but I understood that he was up with Geert - is there an error in the results here?

Racing in a fairly narrow channel with a strong cross wind was a challenge. The trees and windmills meant that we were constantly swapping between sat in and forward, and trapezing (sometimes twin trapezing) off the back of the boat. Fortunately, with such a big fleet, there are always plenty of "wind indicators" around, with the really big gusts marked by people swimming <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

We had a minor incident when Ann found the limits of how far you can get your weight back and ended up trapezing off the tiller cross-bar...

All in all, a really great day. It's a shame we didn't give Geert and Bard some more trouble, but we finished by over-taking a couple of Nacra 20s, so we were pretty pleased with how we did.



A small fraction of the fleet.

Thanks to everyone for such a warm welcome. It was great to see our sport really is so active on the other side of the channel, it's just a shame that the ferry prices mean that we can't get over more often.

Paul