An early end

31 July 2015

With light winds we have reached the second waypoint without problems. The weather reports said that the next day west wind would come and increase. But the time before the western wind was important. It was a night with very light and variable winds and it would increase in the morning. The directions of the wind would vary greatly and it was therefore very dependent on what your position in the field would be. Our idea was that if we were to come out against the morning on the eastern side of the field, this would be the best for us. Also, we would have the current with us during thee ‘light’ night. 
But we did not expect that little wind and the competition was floating in the same direction… Fully concentrated we tried to catch the wind and our plan succeeded. By morning, when the wind slowly came, we were almost where we wanted to be. Now it was time to sail close-hauled and to keep the ship going. So watch out; do not luff too much, nor bear away!!
Slowly the wind turned like we had expected and even counted on. So we started luffing, a few degrees at a time, not too fast, concentration!
And yes! At a quarter to 12 (UTC) we finally were steering straight towards the third waypoint. From this moment on we could go slowly give the sails more slack and gain more and more speed. 
Suddenly we hear race control on the radio with the news that the race would end earlier!!  Finish at 12:00 UTC for Class A… 
So the tactics that we used just started to pay out, but we could only profit from it for 15 minutes! 
The reason is still unknown, but according race control we finished 2^nd in our class.  That makes the question of why the race ended early not relevant anymore, but on the other hand we were just in a position to show our competition what we got and that gives us the feeling that our victory has been taken away..
But ultimately it is of course not all that important. The whole idea of ​​the Tall Ship Races is that young people make friends with other young people from other countries, develop social skills and in the meantime have fun sailing. And that has been quite a successful on board, with eight different nationalities and great sailing together. 
Yet we are secretly very curious to find out in what position we finished! If the official result is announced, we will let you know of course.