Western Cape

Hi All,

Just to give you an insight on our boys long but rewarding travels in Europe during and beyond the school holidays....

We (Alex, Ed and myself) left Cape Town on the evening of the last school day. On the flight to Amsterdam we met the Davis family on their way to Greece, also we had my brother and sister in law and their four kids on the same plane (on their way to UK) plus a class mate of Alex's... so we pretty much knew everyone on the KLM Boeing 777!

It was the first time in Finland for the boys for 5 years. Their Finnish had become very rusty and the grandparents hardly recognised the guys. The program for the 4 weeks stay in Finland was hugely sailing biased and there was not much time for anything else...

They started off with a 5-day training clinic with the Finnish Worlds Team, coached by their team coach, a young Laser sailor and a former Optimist international. The weather was not the best, I had to buy & borrow expensive gear to keep the brother warm during their 7-8 hours long days on the water. They sailed in heavy rains, hail showers, gale force winds and also had to wait for the wind at some stage. It was a flat out session and one day they were towed into the middle of Gulf of Finland to have a 10NM surf downwind to the club! Each day was completed with a proper session in the club's sauna, melting the frozen fingers, toes etc. The Finns of course were kitted for all this and sailed comfortably in their Musto drysuits...

After the 5 days of intensive training and long days on the water it was time for the third national ranking event and the final Worlds selection regatta for the Finns. I had left for England in the meanwhile and the boys were hosted and managed by my brother and his wife. They carried on sailing the local club boats (brand new Winners!) using their own sails that we took with us. It was 3 days of sailing - three races each day. Alex sailed very consistently, being in top 7 for the first 7 races with a race win and a second as his best scores in the fleet of 55 sailors. Without a gear failure in one race and some massive shifts that ruined his last two races, he was battling for a regatta win until the last day. A fifth at the end of it was a very good result after all and he left 2 of the Finnish Worlds Team sailors behind. Ed sailed well as well, finishing in the top 10 in six races out of nine. The unfortunate thing was that he was a bit too aggressive on the start line and scored two BFD's (black flag disqualifications) when finishing 5th and 9th respectively. Hence the overall result (20th) didn't quite reflect his performance on the water, but the experience was great and a lot of new contacts were established during the event. Also the language was getting more fluent by the day...

The next two days the boys participated in a National Zoom8 training clinic! The Zoom class (of which we have a demo on Stephen du Toit's backyard) is rather active and big in Scandinavia but somehow it is the "B fleet" to Oppies and the level of competition is not enormously high. To prove this Alex won all the races on first day when the wind was light and as the breeze got stronger for the second day, it was Ed's turn to demolish the fleet of 20 Zooms to secure a 1-2 finish for the ZVYC sailors. After the days of Zoom racing Alex had arranged some further sailing with an old friend from the Uruguay Opti Worlds, Sinem Kurtbay. She arranged some extra sailing on a 29er and a 49er to make the days a bit more eventful. After 10 days of nonstop sailing it was time for something else and the boys were "evacuated" by a friend of mine (with three boys more or less in Alex's and Ed's age!!) and they spent 6 days in a holiday town in the most southern tip of Finland, fishing, bicycling, playing tennis, puttputt, driving go-karts on a proper racing court in the open and driving the adults nuts. I returned from UK to spend some time with the boys.

In Helsinki the boys were taken to sea on further types of sailing boats. My brother's classic Six Metre, a Laser 16, a Finngulf 44, a hundred years old pilot boat with a cotton gaff-rigged sail on it just to mention some of them... They also rowed several miles to some outer cliffs in the Helsinki archipelago to spend a day of Robinson Crusoe in the finally sunny and beautiful weather. Swimming and sunbathing on the remote rocks with no one around and nothing to wear was quite an experience to these urban youngsters. They were both absolutely thrilled about the opportunities that were open to them as it was no problem to potter around in the capital of Finland on their own, make their own plans without needing to worry about safety or anything.

The last weekend in Finland was another regatta, a smaller event with Optimists, Zooms, Lasers and 606 (small 3-man keel boat) attending. It was held on a beautiful island where we were hosted by an old neighbour family from my childhood days in an old romantic fisherman cottage right next to the yacht club. We had a sauna again and swam in a fresh water lake in the middle of the island. The water is so clear and clean that one can drink it! The boys had a chance to make their choice between an Oppie and a Zoom and to my surprise Alex went for a Zoom and Ed for an Oppie. Alex won all the races in the small fleet (6) of Zooms and Ed blew his victory in the fleet of 12 Oppies by taking an OCS in the last race. At least I don't need to tell him to be more aggressive on the start line...

The time in Finland was up, I left for the Six Metre Worlds in Cowes, Ed was to return to Cape Town (flying on his own to Amsterdam where he was met by his aunt, uncle and four cousins again) and Alex was adopted by the Finnish Worlds team to meet the South African team a couple of days later in Sardinia. I flew directly from England to Sardinia to be in the RSA support team for Alex and the rest of the team during the World Championships. The experience this time was in many ways encouraging as Brevan Thompson took a bullet on a windy day and got several other top 10 finishes in strong breeze. The rest of the team also had their moments of glory and Alex managed to finish 14th in the second last race to keep him motivated for the years to come.

The European Tour was over and a happy but tired father&son team returned to Cape Town after a 60hr pitstop in Helsinki, while we actually didn't do any sailing at all!

Wishing all the ZVYC members a successful season of sailing!

Eero