28th of October - 7 th of November : short sail

Ready, set, ...

Today the mini transat starts it's second leg from our harbour in Arrecife to the carabian. over 70 SOLO craft 6.5 meter depart at 11.00 hr. Yeah, not. Since the vessels have no engine, and sailing out the harbour is not permitted they have to be towed. Island logistics/logic dictate that you do that with 4 dinghies. Unaware of this somewhat short engined situation, we leave the harbour at 9.00 to withness the start of the race at sea.

At 11.00 8 boats are out. 68 to go. The waiting game commances. By half past 3 they're finally all out and we position us behind the yellow starting buoy, behind the officials ship and behind about 5 other vessels that want to see everything from the first row. I try to paint the picture. The buoy is positioned about 300 meters from the shoreline. Left and right you can go aroud the island to set sail accross the Atlantic. Behind us is Africa, okay about 100 miles further that is. There is absolute radio silence. No shot is fired, no flaggs waves, only a black anchore dome is raised. That must be the sign to start the race. All of a sudden all contestants raise their spinakkers, and turn .... TOWARDS AFRICA

All of a sudden 74 very angry small vessels with steel tips and 14 knots speed come toward us. We are in the middle of the starting line. Noone mentioned anything, no radio comunication, nothing. The only thing left for us to do is turn 180 degrees towards africa and with whatever saiil we have and full throttle we start going in the same direction that the mini transat ships. We are being called names in about 8 different languages and supprisingly, we all understand them. After 4 minutes of blood, sweat and almost in tears, all spinakkers on steriods have passed us.

Next race that starts, I'm in a bar on the shore with binoculars.