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July 09, 2007
AZAB 2007 - Its all over!
Ok, So I have been back from my AZAB a little over a week. My body has stopped aching and started to function properly again and I am finally up to date with my laundry. I have shaken a lot of hands, received an awful lot of “well done” messages and drunk a fair amount of gin. The euphoria of completing the race has subsided, my brain has conveniently forgotten about all of the troublesome bits and I am now thinking about the next big challenge… Oh dear !
I took a fair bit of video while sailing (when conditions permitted). A montage of stuff can be found below (Quicktime required).
Low Quality Version (17Mb)
High Quality Version (74Mb)
I finally got around to plotting my daily position reports and am appalled by my outbound leg. I will have to do the race again at some point in the future if only to improve on my line.
It would be fair to say that the AZAB is by far the hardest thing I have done so far. I found that the difficult bits were always when conditions fell light and nothing could be done to get the boat moving. We had spent all night pushing hard only to be slowed almost to a stop for 10 hours by lack of wind. Grrrr... On a few occasions I would have happily been airlifted off of the boat, the frustration was that intense…. I found the only remedy was an encouraging chat with my girl friend and some sleep.
It is very difficult to describe the point in time when you realise that you are completely and totally screwed if something significant breaks. This moment of clarity for me came when the vang exploded overnight (twice) and we lost a kite. This stuff bouncing around my head became a natural brake that slowed our pace to something I felt more comfortable with. Interestingly enough as we approached land we tended to push a little harder.
On the outbound leg we passed through a deep low. As we went into it we experienced 50 knot gusts and a mean true wind strength between 40 and 45 knots. As we the passed through the middle it became lovely. Then, during the exit we sat in 40knots plus for 24 hours. In the worst of it the seas were huge and emotions ran high. We flew a storm jib, let the pilot take the brunt of the helming responsibility, switched the seame on and went below.
A lot of discussion was had about the correct end of the island to use for approaching and departing. Our choice in both instances was to opt for the west end. This decision served us well as those in the east sat in the wind shadow and lee of the island.
The arrival was a fantastic relief. Once through the various officials we were given a berth and began to take stock of what we had just pulled off. It was a super feeling. Partners arrived and our holiday started. Then, 3 days before the start of the 2nd leg we said goodbye to partners and the comfort of our hotel rooms and went back to NINJOD to prepare for the 2nd leg.
Our start for the 2nd leg was fantastic; we were the 3rd boat (almost 2nd by a length) to the rounding mark before heading west. After that we seemed to sail into wind hole after wind hole until finally we broke free of the high that had consumed a lot of our efforts for very little gain. The final days of the return leg home saw large rolling seas and force 6/7 winds with strong gusts.
We crossed the finish line and improved on our outbound time by a good few hours. This made me exceptionally pleased. We then without stopping headed back to Burnham-on-Crouch. The Azores to Burnham-on-Crouch took 9 days and 20 hours.
We finished 7th in class and 16th overall. Our total elapsed time for both legs was 15 days, 16 hours and 9 minutes. Our corrected was 16 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes and 56 seconds.
Many thanks to all of those super people who helped me out !
Paul
Posted by ninjod at July 9, 2007 04:26 PM