9.12. A Beginning

36 hours from landing. Time to reflect back on the experience.

It was an experience that met all our expectations. We got all we were after: excellent team spirit in the boat, fun and relaxed two weeks, being pampered by our Italian hosts, great sailing in sun and perfect winds, some heavy wind and difficult situations to get the adrenaline up. Perfect.

How did we do? Winning line honours in our class and being 46. of over 200 boats (of which 170 are faster than Monomotapa) is pretty good. In handicap 2. in class, in top 10 overall is equally good. Especially considering that we had practically no weather information to plan our tactics. Did we try hard enough? If we hadn’t broken anything, the answer would clearly be no. With two spinnakers and some smaller things kaput, we can say that did push it. Actually we were at our best on the hardest conditions, the heaviest winds. If there had been more of those, we would have had a good opportunity to clear the trophy table. Purely from the sailing perspective we learned a lot. None of us had extensive experience from driving with spinnaker. Now after two weeks in varying conditions I am sure we all are pretty confident about that.

About our bet on the arrival time. Iiro’s estimation was 11 min. from the actual arrival time. Not a bad guess over a sailing time of over 100 hours. I am sure I will hear about that for the next five years.

At least for me one of the really positive things in the trip was our Monomotapa. As Finns we have of course been familiar with and proud of the reputation of Swans, but we were still amazed about the sailing qualities of our Swan 46. As an X-37 sailor I would say that I am used to good, but there were so many occasion where it became clear that an ocean passage sets it own requirements.

So, was this the first step in round the world sailing? Probably not. We are all (except Iiro of course) a bit too hyper active to do this for two years in a row. But this will probably lead to new experiences. Alberto does the best Mediterranean regattas and is planning to participate in Fastnet Race as well. I am sure part of the crew will return to those.

Hopefully the most lasting result of this adventure is the friendship ties made with Alberto, Andrea and Paco. Again we want to thank them for this great experience. This is just a beginning of a friendship. The next etap on that path is Volvo Suursaari Race on 11.-13.6.2010. We have invited the Italian crew to join us for this traditional race that is with almost 200 boats one of the largest ocean races in Europe.

On behalf of the whole crew I would like to thank all our followers and other readers for following our trip. Olli will put a selection of photos to web latest next week, the link will be published here as soon as it is available.

Navigare necesse est.

- Hannu