Open dutch skiff trophy 2011

Directly after the Open Dutch Skiff trophy I started to write something on the blog.Halfway my post I became distracted by all kind of daddy and other duties. Finally after some weeks now I found some time, to fulfill my own goal to write something when I sailed a Moth race. Due to the birth of our second daughter and other priorities I didn't made it to other Moth races this year, so the open dutch were my only moth race this season.

Koos http://internationalmoth.wordpress.com/ and Gio http://giovannigaleotti.blogspot.com/ already covered the event from their perspective.

It was great to see new faces in the moth class during the open dutch Skiff trophy. The weekend we had 8 enthusiastic moths at the start of the Benelux open skiff regatta. Saturday it was mostly a windy affair with showers. The latter ensured that we got some impressive gusts! The moths showed the other skiff's what real performance looks like. Arjan impressed with an complete see through knited trampoline and sheer determination during the day. As some of the 25+ knots gusts proved a bit too much for most of the mothies. The last race of day became due to breakages of the other moths a two boat race between Constantijn and myself. 

Jaap Groenendijk was unlucky by damaging his main foil due to the unpredictable rocks near the breakwater, he had to miss the next day. He is a great sport and on sunday he supported the remaining mothies from shore.

Sunday the wind was moderate and apart from Jaap and Gio [Link to Gio Blog] everybody was ready to foil! 

It was impressive to see Morgan in his first moth race improving every single race and that is a promise of what we can expect from him in the future! Chris showed improved skills, however his personal fight with his push rod made his flights not completely stabile. Koos enthusiasm is as always contiguous and his cheering when he nails a flying gybe is a joy. Buddy Constantijn had great straight line speed on his new black monster and became 3rd overall.

My VRX was performing well and by not capsizing on Saturday and staying (mostly) in the patchy breeze on sunday I could win the races. Although Morgan was getting closer every race, thereby becoming second on his first moth race.  

For the winter period training sessions are planned and it would be great to jointly getting the level up. 

I decided to start selling my loyal Bladerider VRX and decide later what his replacement will be. As it seems the Ninja is also performing very well. So pending on when I can sell the trusted NED 3454, so I will join the winter training with or without a boat :-)