Huib is very sad about hurting the whale.."It was beautiful, black and as long as my boat (40ft).. the sea was red with it's blood and it heaved and sighed like a monster.. he was like the wounded dragon when Siegfried got him (Wagner). I hope I didn't hurt him too badly..he must have been sleeping! Or surely he would have got out of the way!"

LATER last night, Huib was woken with a huge BLAST!! It was the wind hitting him from behind, Vijaya heeled over at 40 degrees, flying along at 6 or 7 knots! He tried to correct his main sail with the autopilate but the force was so great, it blew the main fuse! So then he had to do it manually and fix the fuse (done).

HUIB JUST HIT A WHALE AT 1AM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(She was probably in love with Vijaya.. but got too close..!  OW! )

QUOTE:

"my god

I hit a whale

the poor ceature, i saw him having a lot of pain + blood

the boat went over it, big bang. bow in the water

all within 10 seconds

after I was checking keel+rudder

seems ok

therefore i didnt hear ur call  

  

still  bit shaky"

 

In the bible they are called LEVIATHAN:

Psalm 104: " O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small. See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea."

In anglo saxon art from about 800, it is known as HELLMOUTH, a monstrous animal into whose mouth the damned disappear at the LAST JUDGEMENT... GULP!

That's huibs brain hanging round his neck! The auto pilate. And the Ostar's sticker's sticky tape..and let's sing "Huib's too sexy for his shirt,tra,la,la!

Here are some pics of my sailor-lad.. now he's on the ocean, miles from another human being.."What a relief!" I hear his whisper on the wind! He e-mailed me via satellite phone.. that the water was phophorescing last night and it looked like his boat had set the sea on fire..

Every wave went straight into the boat!

Huibs dutch friend Bart lost his front hatch in a gale during the night and every wave went straight into the boat! So he reefed all his sails and hoved to (if you heave to, you lash the helm over to one side so the boat always turns into the wind. But you also put the fore sail on the wrong side of the boat so when the head goes up into the wind it gets pushed back again. This way you stay approximately at the same angle to the wind and don't go forwards very much.. william simon says...) and made a new hatch out of his floorboards!!! Pumped out the boat and by 7am continued the race!

Ostar 09 - The oldest solo boat race.

I never saw so much 'Solo Panic' as on the yacht berth at Plymouth, while ALL the sailors tried to be ready in time for the start of the OSTAR 09!

Everyone had Mini-Disasters (like loosing bicycle chains(!), or faithful GPS's deciding choosing that particular moment to die...)

The Chandlery of the Royal Western, was full of wild-eyed skippers as nervous and tense as race-hoses! Clutching dead batteries, and miles of the wrong length of rope!



I managed to get on the r.i.b of the official race photographer, and after the final gun, we had to pick him up from the start vessel where Prince Philip was (the husband of the queen, by the way!)




Then we had to chase, at break-neck speed, the pink trimaran of the french girl (who is SO tiny and skinny she looks like a little bit of rope herself!), before she reached the lighthouse.

The Eddystone lighthouse is truly awesome. on the top of a mountain under the sea, so far from land.. sadly the famous red and white striped one, has been taken to the Plymouth town for retirement.

The race seemed to be made up of 4 Girls and 4 Dutchmen as far as I was concerned!

So good luck to them all!