Start of the race

29 July 2022

News

Today was the start of the race. All ships had the same start window of 4 hours. Between 10:00 and 14:00 Dutch time we were allowed to cross the starting line. Only there was hardly a breath of wind, so many ships decided to start late in the window. The idea behind this is that if you start later, you will get wind earlier and therefore you can sail faster.

After the start, the question is always what the best tactic will be. Do you take the shortest route, or do you look for better winds. Most ships steer as far north as possible and (if they can) even northeast, to cover the shortest possible route. We have chosen to play it more tactically and sail towards the northwest. We think we will have more wind to the west and (eventually) a better angle to the wind, which should make us faster than our competitors.

At the moment most of the fleet is moving towards the first waypoint a lot faster and our decision does not seem the right one.. But we think that from tomorrow (end of the day) we will be able to sail a lot faster than the other ships. We will see in the coming days whether that is actually the case. For the time being, the other ships disappear from the AIS one by one and the doubt about our tactics is slowly increasing. But it is about ‘the long run’. We will see…