On Sunday lunch-time the Offshore Sailing Worlds in the Hague Netherlands started with two offshore races. We in Team Pro4u managed to finish 6th in the first race and then we won the second race (that was counted double) so we are in the lead in Class C among 49 boats after the first two offshore races.

The offshore races was in total 135 miles on a course outside the coastline of Netherlands and race 1 was from the start to a gate approximately half-way and race 2 was from the start to the finish. The race 2 also had extra weight and was counted double and can also not be discarded later when one discard are allowed among the planned 9 races.

We started the race with an incident in the start but quickly came back from that and did a good first up-wind rounding at the first mark among the top boats in our class. After that we sailed well and had the overall strategy to go close to land to hopefully get more wind and less current against us. The strategy worked relatively well in the first race but not fully, we ended the race in 6th place sailing in the middle of the night.

We then continued sailing well and continued the strategy going into land and this time we had big outcome when a game changing wind change came and left most of the boats going out to sea without wind and we had wind plus we had a good 1.5 knot current with us as well. We managed to pass all the boats and finished first in race 2!

We are very pleased with our start of the Worlds and being in the lead with a total score of 8 points after the first two races are a good start.

What is also good is that the scoring system with combined ORC and IRC results works well and for the top boats there are not that many differences, for us we won both the ORC and IRC scoring for offshore race 2.

The results can be found here:  Results Class C Offshore races

Now the Worlds continue tomorrow with likely two inshore races and although we have had a good start tomorrow we need to focus again and do our best to staty in the lead.