Imjuiden Holland - Hull (Epicentre of sailing excellence)

Holland proved to be a popular stopover for many of the boats, but for 3 of our crew members it was a bit special - Hans, Frankie and Minke all Dutch nationals had a special smile as we crossed the finish line ahead of Hull. Most crew managed at least one day in Amsterdam, the day we visited the Dutch football team were doing the city tour, not on an open top bus as we would in London, but a flotilla of boats down the canals!! After the usual window shopping and taking in the sights we returned back to the boat to prepare for the final race.
The morning of race day found us rocking around in a force 8 gale and driving rain in the marina although we are due to slip lines at 16.00 with the race starting at 19.00hrs. The forecast suggested that the strong winds were to continue into the night maybe getting lighter through the night, so again a rough crossing was in store for all crews and those who over indulged the previous night would surely suffer.
Cork departed 2 hours before the rest of the fleet and we eventually slipped lines at about 16.30hrs, as we departed the comfort of the harbour breakwater we were hit by a substantial swell and approx 35 knots of wind!! We were to remain in this "holding area" for approx 2 hours, not too bad until disaster stuck once again. This time in the form of a complete tear in our main sail just below the 2nd reefing point! This meant that we would have to complete the whole race with 2 reefs in our main sail, a bit like doing the Isle of Man TT race on a push bike since we had considerably less canvas than anyother boat in the fleet. This would surely give Cape Breton the opportunity to overtake us for the coveted 2nd place overall, only time would tell.
Race start was once again in the Le Mans format and once again we got off to our usual flyer leading the fleet for the first two miles, once the fleet realised that the wind was actually decreasing rather than building, then they all shook out the reefs and went to full main and effectively left us for dead. We really had no control of our destiny, yes we were on the podium whatever, but we wanted to collect the 2nd place overall!
The wind did eventually build but by then the damage was done, we were in last place with Cape Breton climbing through the fleet as they scented a gilt edged opportunity to leap frog us into second place. The seas continued to build and we had a pretty rough crossing, as predicted some of our crew were feeling somewhat green afetr the excesses of the previous night. We needed the winds to build since that would be the only way that the other boats would reduce the amount of canvas that they were flying and give us a chance of catching them. Sure enough, we caught and overtook California as they had a very conservative sail plan and we set our sights on Edinburgh and maintained our focus on staying ahead of California. The news that we were getting on the boat suggested that Cape Breton were now in third place in this race and were looking to take the Australian boat - nail biting stuff on Team Finland!! What none of us had factored in was the "Cork factor" and their handicap, they were actually leading the race with Ull & Umber in second place, Australia in third and Cape Breton in fourth!!
And that my friends was how this race result finished, with Team Finland in 9th place and California in 10th, this gave us a cushion of 1.3 points over Cape Breton after 35,000 miles across the worlds oceans!!