Hassebas - Log 5

Fifth Newsletter Hassebas

After a newsletter in Dutch for the younger children, we are happy to send another message in the English language about the holy Hassebassie from Eemnes. We are very impressed by the capabilities of this boat. For the last 24 hours this boat pushed us with an average speed of almost 12 knots over the Ocean (276 miles or Amsterdam – Paris in 24 hrs) that brought us 216 miles closer to our destination St Lucia. This makes that in our cruising invitation class we made up for the learnings in the 1^st 2 days and passed almost all boats in our division. Only one boat, the Triumph (Baltic 64) is still 10 miles ahead of us, and the goal is that also this boat can read the name Hassebas on the backside of our boat soon. With a truly trained professional crew we probably could have done much better in the overall ratings…so Mike Reardon: we miss you and thanks for all support from Tortola (FYI: Mike was not able to join us as he came back too late on shore because of calamities in another Ocean race last week).

Crew

The crew turned out to be an excellent team. All people on board are willing to “give more than they take” and this means there have been no irritations so far. At the end of the day we are now 6 days in a row with one another on a boat and there is no single moment where you can decide to step off and do something else. Olaf managed well that tasks are clearly divided between the 6 of us, and everyone wants to make sure he does a 110% job. Result: there is discipline, also in terms of safety, the boat is clean, the toilets do not smell, and there is excellent food every day.

Boat handling is something we had to get used to during the first couple of days. We never sailed the boat as a team, and for most individual crew members this boat was like stepping in a new car: to simply find out how everything works takes 2 days time. As you could read before, this has cost us a genaker on day 1, and some problems with the rudder that now seem to be resolved. After these leanings, we now gybe the boat with 12 knots and a genaker of 348m2 very smoothly. The only thing we are still frustrated about is that the automatic pilot is still more accurate in keeping course and therefore gaining miles but this will probably never change.

Finally our Chief Entertainment Officer has invented an effective way of providing constructive feedback to over- and underperformers. Yesterday we had 2 hours with slow wind speed and we could sail only 7-8 knots so it was time to catch some fish. With Olaf’s lourd we catched a 60 cm long Tuna, and Mous was able to get the animal on board. He killed and cleaned the Tuna effectively and it is now waiting in the fridge for a fresh Sashimi appetizer before dinner tonight. Result: he gained the Hassebas shirt for this outstanding performance, and is allowed to wear this for one hour. Tomorrow there will be another winner. Hugo’s loard catched a 90 cm long Dorade. In the process to get this beautiful fish on board, Michiel screwed up and is now wearing a prisoner’s shirt for this appalling underperformance. The fish has still half of Hugo’s lourd in his mouth and this is now the first Dorade swimming around with braces across the Ocean. Tomorrow we decide again who was the “shitman” of the day.

Strategy

Another thing we learned is that we have to ask ourselves more often if we are still on the right track in terms of tactics and strategy. We downloaded “zygrib” files (expected weather information about wind speed/direction) before we left for an entire week, but now we download them via our satellite phone every day. Things still change day by day, and we allow ourselves to adjust our strategy once every 24 hours on where we want to head the boat. We probably went too far South during day 1 and 2, and had to tack earlier. During the last 2 days we have gained 80 nautical miles back on the boat that is heading the racing division, and passed all but one boat in our cruising invitation division. We learned much more about how to use different variables (variation, deviation, current and wind direction) to our advantage and to bring us closer to St Lucia as quickly as possible.

Boat

Like stated in our introduction we remain amazed by the capabilities of our boat, a Shipman 63 which was designed by a architect and surgeon in Slovenia. During the past 25 years this couple, called J&J, gained the award “best new boat of the year” 17 times with new designs. What amazes our crew is that times of sailing 5-9 knots will change to 10-15 knots with these new light weight hulls. For Holland perhaps not that important, but for Ocean sailing certain distances simply can be reached within a shorter period of time. Most of us would have never been able to participate during this race if it would take us 3 weeks, but 2 weeks is somehow manageable.

Sailing during the night is the most amazing experience. Without seeing anything (except on the radar of course), we fly with 15-16 knots over the ocean. We use the automatic pilot with a safe true wind angle of 150 degrees. It is like being on a speedboat and the water flies all over the place. The hull makes a sound of a singing 12 cylinder Ferrari. We gained confidence that this is possible and we have action plans in place if the wind starts to blow faster than 25 knots. Then the genaker will be removed with “mine worker’s” lights on our heads and life lines connected to the boat, if necessary with all hands on deck. During the night we only sleep 4 hours, the other 4 hours 50% of the crew is on deck to manage the boat and statistics. There is work to do but most of the time we supervise if things are OK. As we have not allowed ourselves to consume alcohol, we then lit a cigar and this is now how Hassebas is recognized by other boats. If you see 3 little lights on deck with 3 guys with hair like they are sitting in a wind tunnel, then this must be Hassebas.

Other boats/tankers

So far we have not seen a lot of other boats, perhaps 1-2 on average per day…..next to a shark we noticed all of a sudden when Olaf and Hugo were in charge to steer the boat 2 days ago.

One boat from the racing division crossed us 3 hours ago with only 100 mtrs distance (quite amazing after sailing for 6 days on the Atlantic Ocean). We chatted via the marifoon, and we agreed to take pictures from each other’s boat with the Genaker/Spinaker. We agreed to exchange them in St Lucia and exchanged E-mail addresses. We could not agree at all on who would arrive in St Lucia first.

Last night we noticed a tanker of 148 mtrs from Nigeria on our radar. It was only 2 miles away and as it was so cloudy we hardly could see his deck lights. From the radar it was clear we would cross one another in about 25 minutes.  Our problem was that we went so fast with 15-16 knots and had raised the Genaker. So not a lot of flexibility to move the boat in a different direction ahnd taking this thing down in complete darkness is not what we were waiting for so we contacted the boat. We explained our situation and the captain turned out to be very cooperative and to turn his 148 mtrs tanker so that we could pass him on Starboard. Great guy from this tanker Filicon from Nigeria!

And then for the English readers, we would like to share one experience we already wrote down in our last Dutch newsletter. It was a similar situation where we came too close to a Spanish fisher’s boat during the night. This conversation via the Mari phone went somewhat different as follows:

“hello, hello this is the sailing yaught Hassebas.....could you tell us in which direction you are heading?”

“MY ENGLISH NO GOOD, ANYONE  SPEAK ESPAGNOL??”

“we are sorry, no one speaks Espagnol, could you try to speak English?

“OK, OK, WHERE ARE YOU FROM?”

“we are from the Netherlands, and participate in a boat race from Las Palmas to St Lucia, we are heading towards 290 degrees”

“OK,VERY NICE……I HAVE NICE FAMILY AND 2 CATS. HOW YOU? YOU LIKE SPAIN?”

“yes we also have families, dogs, cats and hamsters......but could you please tell us where you are heading?;

“NO UNDERSTAND!!, PLEASE ESPAGNOL OR SPEAK SLOWLY”

In the meantime we see the deck lights of the fisher’s boat on top of each other which means that this boat is heading straight towards our boat. The boat is 2 miles away from us but the Captain had for the time being more interest in having a chat with us. Finally the story continues as follows:

 “I AM HEADING 180, I WILL CHANGE TO 263……..SO YOU CAN PASS ME”.

“OK, thank you, does that mean we pass in front of your boat or behind your boat?

“PLEAZE!!, NO UNDERSTAND……YOU CAN PASS MY BOW!”

Knowing that a fisher’s boat has a couple of kilometers fishing lines behind its boat, we thought it would be good to be 100% sure how to pass this boat without risking either a collision or ending up with our keel and 2 rudder blades in these fishing lines.

“OK, does this mean we cross your boat BEHIND?” (which was the safest option anyway...)

“YES OK BEHIND! YOU LIKE SPAIN?”

“OK thank you and of course we love Spain!”

Keeping our fingers crossed we passed the boat and finally we saw that his decklights slowly disappeared with having fishing lines around our boat. Hassebas went full speed ahead.

From these statistics you can see that we moved the boat from Amsterdam to Paris and back during the last 48 hrs. You should take into account that we had some wind issues during both afternoons so although the difference with some of the other days is not huge, we now understand how to cross this Ocean using all available statistics and adjust the strategy max 1 time every 24 hours. If the wind continues to help us with speeds of 15-25 knots, we believe we can celebrate Hugo”s and Martijn’s birthday on shore in St Lucia. We’ll see!

Special reader’s column “Ask it to Hassebas”.

So far we received many responses on our almost daily newsletters. For this reason we started a special column with frequently asked questions called “ask it to Hassebas” so that we can answer possible questions you also might have on your mind. Every day we will share the TOP 5 most relevant questions with you:

1.     From auntie Greta (Suchtelen): yes dear auntie, we are connected with our life lines to the table every day:

2.     From Jan Jonkman (Baarn): Did you already twist the Island St Lucia 90 degrees with the Heeren? This is of course what we are heading for Jan…..but “patience is a clean business”.

3.     From Diederik Stevens (Hedikhuizen): how do you keep the air clean with 6 grown up adults on board? Good question Diederik.

4.     From Bela Gandhi (Chicago): these 2 younger crew members are pretty handsome. Could I contact them for my smart dating academy? Of course Bela, after having been for 2 weeks on the Ocean, we’re sure that these guys would be open for a blind date upon arrival in St Lucia.

5.     From Uncle Joe (Seattle): hi guys, where do you eat during the evening? Any drive thru’s on the way to St Lucia? All organized Uncle Joe, our boat is fully loaded with coke, we are from Amsterdam as you know.

In case you have more important questions, please send them to [email protected]   and we will try to respond asap!