Last week Enno called me if I wanted to sail the Open Dutch Championships in Medemblik with him. We won in 1998 the World Championships but I stopped in 2000 and started sailing a Star. But this was a nice opportunity to see how we would be doing after so many years. Luckily I was the substitute for only a day before his regular crew would take over from me. I suspected physically not being up to par. Together with my daughter I did crunches and dead lifts the days before, so the myalgia set in early.
It was special to notice that we hardly needed any talking while racing: ‘Hein, you do the tactics and I’ll sail fast.’ And he can sail fast. Tactics is way easier then. But since there wasn’t too much wind Friday, the speed differences were less as well, so I needed to stay awake. It was beyond my expectation that we topped the leaderboard (26 participants from 4 countries) at the end of the day. The next 2 days he sailed with Ard (whose hangover after a wedding party was not too bad) to a convincing lead. I watched the last 2 races with my daughter from a RIB. She had never been at a sailing race and it was nice to introduce her to my past. She took the picture of the proud father above.
