Monday morning on the 'Ora et LAbora' and Peter starts work on the wall separating the kitchen from the sitting area. As he works we come up with an alternative layout for the kitchen; one that may suit Dave's length better. We'll mock it up and show it to him on Wednesday.
On Sunday it blew hard, the most wind we've had yet in the 16m2.
Em is, of course, a seasoned heavy weather Otimist sailor by now. She began her race with a terrible start - 16th of 16 - but gradually picked off the boats ahead of her to finish third.
We had a bad start too, ducking most of the fleet on port because I wanted to go right. Right was good. By the first mark we were second, chasing the Klein family. The wind was building to a steady 18 knots with shifty gusts well into the 20's. Claudia, on the end of her trapeze wire, would ask every now and then if all was ok. I thought so, though I was watching our very bendy boom and one or two of the older fittings very carefully. Up the third beat Jasper caught us and passed us on a flat out planing reach. We worried him down the run and accross to the finish but ended a couple of metres behind him.
Having filled the workshop with wet sails we then went home and filled the barge with wet clothing.
I remembered my definition of winter sailing last year was when your wetsuit doesn't get dry between one week's sailing and the next.
Having done my homework, planing the mast and changing the shroud attachment points, we were looking forward to racing on Sunday morning. The boat felt good, with a bit more pressure on the rudder on the wind, though seeing the mast using all it's new space in the mast foot took some getting used to.
We got a good start, rounding the first buoy first but dropping two places on the second beat. Our excuse was that the boat was full of water, the seams having opened up from four weeks without sailing.
We made it back up to second place at the finish.
Seems like the homework paid off, though to complicate things we'd also dug out an older jib made by Kort and Smits, which came with the boat and to my eye looks much better.
With thirty years of changes visible in the steel roof of the 'Ora et Labora' it has been a challenge to get the framework up on the ceiling in such a way that the beaded pine planks will run in a pleasing curve, to match the sheer line of the decks.
This is one of those jobs that people only notice if you get it wrong.
When our barge was empty we had put 900 kilo's of cut up railway track under the floor to keep the propellor under water. Having slowly filled the barge with wood and all our stuff over the years it was time to get the ballast out and pass it on. Each piece weighed about 35 kilo's so I was glad when the last one was out of the barge and in the workshop.
Bas and Marieke came with a trailer and did two trips to their tjalk 'Watergeus'. They are now on their way to Meppel - almost one ton heavier.
We have three tjalks in a row this morning at our workshop. On the outside is 'Vertrouwen', a tjalk from Friesland. In the middle is 'Ommekeer', a small tjalk from Groningen and alongside the quay 'Ora et Labora', our current project, built in Drenthe. One each from the three Northern Provinces of the Netherlands.
From left to right in the back row; Pim, Erwin and Em. Up front with the biggest trophies, Dennis. All four move up from Optimist C to Optimist B in next year's Combi series and Dennis is off to Hoorn in two weeks time to represent the North of Holland at the Combi National Finals.
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