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NINJOD - Hull number 116
While all of todays action was taking place I received a great email from a guy called Dale Kushner in South Africa.
Dale has ordered a Sunfast 3200 and had visited the factory to check on its progress. Dale took this picture of hull number 116 (yes its NINJOD) when standing on his new yacht (hull number 117). Dale’s Sunfast 3200 will be the first in South Africa. How very cool..
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I headed off to Burnham-on-Crouch this morning full of excitement. As I pulled into the town I saw the yacht transporter pulling out of the road that led towards the marina. I pulled into the marina car park and saw the new NINJOD, a shrink wrapped new NINJOD.
After a cup of tea with Ian we unwrapped the ever so shiny NINJOD, my face held a permanent grin from ear to ear throughout the process.
We climbed aboard and took a look below, it was all very clean and had that just pulled out of the factory smell about it.
Tim, the electronics man, arrived and the 3 of us went through where the various additional components were to be installed. AIS transponder, Active Radar reflector, VHF & speakers, Stereo & speakers etc. – all needed to have a sensible installation location.
Ian and I went through the boat branding (name stickers, sail number stickers etc.) and also discussed the location for the additional internal manual bilge pump required for compliance with ISAF special regulations.
When every component had a installation destination and I had spent some more time sitting in super comfortable chart table seat I waved goodbye and went to Roma’s (Jan’s mum) for some lunch.
The next visit is scheduled for Saturday. Hopefully we should be sailing for the 5th of October (Jan’s birthday)
Last Friday Jan and I raced the old NINJOD in the EAORA Buckley Goblets for the last time. The fleet, although sadly low on participants with only 9 yachts, offered 3 classes. We were the only two handed entry. Due to the poor weather forecast for the weekend, most of the fleet had planned to race to Belgium on the Friday, have a quick beer and then leave early on Saturday morning to avoid the very strong winds that were forecast for Sunday; Jan and I had also adopted this plan.
The race started in fairly light conditions with a foul tide deep run along the Wallet. This leg was pretty painful for us because: a) we tend not to go that well in light airs, b) we were in two handed IRC mode and consequently were only allowed to use asymmetric spinnakers AND c) even though we had a pretty good start I had made completely the wrong spinnaker choice. We persevered with the wrong spinnaker for a while before finally I acknowledged my mistake in judgment and told Jan she was right. With the pilot steering we set about the sail change and were both pretty chuffed with how smoothly it went.
By the time we reached Long Sand Head we had left ourselves a fair bit of work to do. The other class 2 competitors (and 1 of the class 3 competitors) were distant dots on the horizon. We aimed to remedy this situation and hoisted our Code Zero (another great sail change). As the wind speed increased the distance between those we could see in front of us shortened, we were catching them up.
The top true wind speed seen was 26.9 knots and about the time we experienced this we were crossing in front of a large ship. We still had the Code Zero up. We bore away slightly and sped off at 10 plus knots without feeling like we were totally in control. As soon as we were clear of the ship we dropped the Code Zero and went back to doing some more sedate fast reaching with our standard headsail, not wanting to damage the boat on our last race.
As we passed through the large ships mooring just off the coast of Oostende we hoisted another spinnaker and headed towards the finish line. We completed the 90nm course in just less than 13 hours.
We hooked up with the crews of Inn Spirit and Upstart, had a bite to eat and then went for a beer in the Cosy Corner. By 0530 the following morning we were on our way back across the North Sea heading for home.
The return trip was a very pleasant experience. With music playing on the stereo and the pilot faultlessly steering us home we experienced great conditions and some really nice boat speeds. This was our last sail on old NINJOD and we were both really pleased that we were able to end our journey with her on something so enjoyable.
New NINJOD arrives in the UK next week, more news on that soon….
