Warming Up 2012

29.3.2012 von Nadine.

Spring in the Netherlands: 16 degrees and sunshine… With this it’s just a minor detail that the wind was rather on the low side.

In one word very nice conditions to introduce our new team member Rok to the fine art of J22 racing. And good conditions to be around 80kg underweight (having “only Rok, Stan and me).
And of course nothing is as easy as it sounds, so we started the Saturday with training: tacking, weight balancing, hoisting our white spinnaker and trying to drop it again (mostly trying…).
So much did we focus on our training that we almost missed our start and had to race with the spi up to the starting area for the first race.
Anyway, despite the struggling in keeping the spi up and flying (I don’t even mention the drop) and keeping the boat flat we did improve, even only slowly on Saturday with a rather mixed series of 15 8 7 12 of 16 participants, showing that there is room for improvement on the 3 person handling and light wind sailing side.

Sunday was the wind a bit stronger to start with (2 bft…) but with still as nice sunshine as we could wish for. The fleet now 17 boats strong (including again six boats from Germany) were all in the best mood. And despite “only” a 14th place in the first race we saw that a good night sleep helped to get the new procedures in our routine. Also Rok was getting fabulously good on the bow - we only were so far behind because a major knot in our spi made anything else impossible. So, by the second race despite a start from the 5th row (and almost a protest) we managed to cross through half of the fleet ending up 6!

Just at this moment Stan mentioned he would like to have one really good race (without hick-ups). Usually this means disaster at the next race, but this time it worked like a charm and we ended up 4th having a wonderful finishing fight where we were engaging in positioning games never known to us before.

Already super happy with the day the only left objective was to once have a good start in addition to nice sailing – and so we tried. We rounded the first buoy first and only left in the end a place to Wouter and his team (overall winner of the series), but we were celebrating with a loud Jabbadabbadoo this amazing second place!
And you can imagine who went dancing on the jetty….

Our congratulations also to the second ESTEC boat with Jean-Michel, Giuseppe and Denis, managing an overall second place in this warming up! Wohooo!

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Last Winter Series Races 2011/2012

29.3.2012 von Nadine.

Finally no ice & fog and certainly enough wind (bft 4-5)! Nothing in the way to have two more races to the 2011/2012 Winterseries… So Ludo, Stan and me went to show our Jabbadabbadoo on the Braassem…

With 60kg underweight, only the three of us and quiet some wind in the sails this was prune to be difficult, but hey, if it would be easy it wouldn’t be called sailing.

So we struggled during the spi drop, hiked like crazy, got bruised and tired, fished our red beast out of the water, struggled some more, but in the end we did well, completing the series with 2x 5th place. Even if it is sometimes tense, the feeling in the end having accomplished that and improved, our skills and us, is not pricable.

Our complete series:

7 NED 1360 Stan Heltzel Jabbadabbadoo:   6 6 5 (9) 5 5

7^th overall of 21 boats and 1 of 2 boats that sailed all races.

Winter is over, time for spring!

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Midwinter cup 2011/2012

8.2.2012 von Nadine.

The midwinter cup is always special for us - mainly because it is our “anniversary” in sailing the J… With this little bit of extra happy feeling we started the midwinter cup, this time in the format of 4 races on the Saturday and 2 (together with the winter series of the other classes) on Sunday. Weather wise you certainly would not believe that we were facing January, having beautiful sunshine and around 10 degrees.
The only thing missing was the wind… But maybe we are in the meantime good enough to handle this minor problem while sailing

But from the first training minute it was clear that it would be a major challenge, as the spinnaker was hardly staying full and gybing was a torture (for the white beast as well as for me trying to keep it flying). Also Ludo and Audrey had a tough job - doing almost acrobatics to keep the boat flat or heeled depending on the need.

It took a while till the wind was steady enough to start the series, but then it went fast (we were the only class). The first start was ok, but soon enough we could see that our upwind speed was not matching some other boats including the somewhat frustrating experience being overtaken on leeward…

However, this was the leading boat and soon we managed with enough trial and error and enthusiastic trim and helming to keep up with the front group. Stan positioned us excellently on the downwind legs and we could end the race after 2 rounds 6th!
The next start turned unfortunately into a disaster as the starter was just 2 seconds later than us and we had to turn a honor round around the starting buoys… Starting last we could show that we are fighters claiming one place after the other till the 8th place (for one of the first times all of us where wishing for longer races). But we did have very interesting battles, especially downwind and close to the finishing line, where we lost a place for not sailing aggressive enough (and not pushing the boat next to us out of the finish with a starboard port situation - understanding is the beginning however and the next time we will not make it that easy to gain a place with us…;)

The last two races were a 6 and a 5 in lighter and lighter wind conditions. But the main highlight was the improvement of our gybes, or at least of one which was thanks to the complete team effort (”moving as one”) almost a perfect gybe in light conditions and also the drops turned out to be mostly problematic in the way that they were too good (too fast and therefore finished too far in front of the buoy)
Ok, there is still a lot of room for improvement, but it feels good to start knowing what we are actually doing (or supposed to do anyway)…

None of us believed that we would sail on the Sunday - the wind dropped even more, showing almost no sign of movement. But the race committee did once more a great job and just found the slot when to race!

The first race felt great - despite the wind conditions, it felt even better than the 5th result it was for us: the start was almost a dream start in the first line only loosing during the race to the top boats. There is this quantum still missing in our performance to keep such a place…
The last race was with a 8th place mirroring the bad start we had, but not even that felt too bad.
In the end we became 8th, but point equal with the 6th (which felt more like we were ranking our own performance).

Greetings from Audrey, Stan, Ludo and me and cheers to more winter sailing coming soon!

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December Sailing

6.1.2012 von Nadine.

First things first: Happy New Year: http://youtu.be/LgsPTrgz8Uk

Who would have thought that December would be a beautiful sailing month for the Jabbadabbadoo sailing team? After the winter race in November was already cancelled (due to fog and no wind?)

As a replacement to the postponed wintercup, we started with a anniversary sail on December the 10^th with the first ever try to sail our Jabbadabbadoo with just Stan and me. At medium to light winds we were flying the red beast through the warming glorious sunlight…

Maybe we had even enough to do with just the two of us, so that we completely forgot to have discussions about how to perform all the manoeuvring … It was like a pure luxury sailing stroll with a lot of spinnaker and certainly not enough hands, but even more fun.

The next day our plan was sailing to the Kaag and participating in the Kaag winter races. So besides regular Ludo, we took Rok on the foredeck, a Jabbadabbadoo Newbie, but “old”  sailor from our home club. The boat was still in the water and the motor was quickly  attached – everything ready for the excursion.

Well, we never made it to the Kaag….

The first minor problem was the engine, which wasn’t as reliable this time as it proved to be during the round the island race, but full of our usual Cowboy manner we voted for sailing through the canals and still continue to the Kaag without motor power. Not a problem at all, just a beautiful sail middle through the houses until, yes until the bridge….

We tried to vote the bridge away as well, but this was not very successful. However, it stayed a beautiful day and so it just turned out to be a small adventure through the canal and a lot of training on the Braassem afterwards. Sorry Rok for making you work so hard on your first day.

The next weekend we participated to the winterseries. Sunday promised to be more windy with tendencies towards the nasty side. Big clouds and showers were locally and very temporarily increasing the winds and gusts to major levels, just to smoothen them down again shortly after. With one of our usual suspects crew (Berit, Stan, Audrey and me) nothing to be scared of, even if the enjoyment was suffering a little bit.

But the joy came back in spades after the start of the race featuring a fourth place at the first buoy with certainly room to improve! We enjoyed a lot having enough upwind speed to come closer and closer to the first three…

Unfortunately on that day the weather really wasn’t with us sailors and the arriving dark front with lightning caused the cancellation of the race and after some hours, Gluehwein and Chocomel sessions in the harbour later even the complete end of the racing day.

 

At least we have been sailing and enjoying it whole-heartedly! With that memory it was almost obligatory to go out again as final end of the year sail after all Christmas feasting on the 30th of December. A bit colder now and with some wind, but still gorgeous sailing conditions for Audrey, Stan and me. Just a bit of enjoying sailing, training and– trying to help the only other boat on the lake which was upside down with the crew on land and mast in mud… Not being able to help physically, we at least could try to reach out for help by phoning the harbour master.

After that and of course a looot of manoeuvres and mark roundings later the day ended also for us – tired but happy.

Being happy summarises what we are with the sailing in 2011 and indeed, we are already more than eager to start 2012 which is packed with sailing highlights (and challenges!)

Happy New Year from all the Jabbadabbadoo team!!! See you on the water!!!

 

December sailing: http://youtu.be/eG82sRrWKgw

 

Nadine

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