ONZK Oostende-Ramsgate on Mini 167

Posted May 24, 08:50 PM · 0 Comments

After handing in my final portfolio at University, I legged it off to the station, caught a train to Dover and joined Koen Willaert in Oostende ready to race Mini 167 in the ONZK Oostende-Ramsgate.

Mini 167 is called “Pikes” and is an old Pogo 1. It is one of the oldest Series boats in the Mini Transat fleet, but still has an edge in light winds. At the moment the forecast looked good for us.

After lifting the boat out of the water and giving it a last scrub, we were more or less ready for the start the next day and proceeded to look at some meteo. It would be a long race—upwind all the way in light winds.

After the start the six minis quickly started match racing each other. And when the wind dropped further, we pulled out the coat zero (imagine a 300% genoa) and were starting to catch boats from other classes.

Pikes upwind under Code Zero

It came down to a shift in the end. We continued all the way down the Belgian coast for more wind and less tide. On the final mile to the windward mark we got a shift wrong and were overtaken by two of the Minis that we had been matchracing for the good part of eight hours.

From there on it was a subtle bear away and the race turned into a procession all the way to Ramsgate. While we were catching up just on boatspeed it wasn’t enough to get back into 2nd or even 1st place. Well, 3rd isn’t too bad either…

During the first half an hour after the start we had aerial photos taken from a helicopter. If you head over to the media section you can look at the high-quality version. The quality is pretty impressive—you can even see the gusts on the water.