Capt. Jaroslaw Kaczorowski:
 Portoroz, Slovenia - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
Today we finally got a repairman to fix the autohelm. He came but, frankly speaking, he was three hours late. He fumbled in the screens for a while, checked if there weren't any metal objects near the compasses, disengaged and then reconnected some cables, made some phonecalls and said that his knowledge was insufficient. He arranged for some specialists to come the next day.
As the autohelms were out of order, we went out in the boat for training with Goły still filling in for the autopilot. I set all the sails by myself and set the ropes when tacking, which wasn't easy. And, as usual, I struggled with the spinnaker. It takes one a lot of time and effort to set it, but I succeeded in the end. However, it still remains a secret for us how to collapse it by yourself so that it won't go into the water. After three hours of tacking, setting and dropping the sails I was completely exhausted. When we were washing the boat in the evening, Goły told me off and said that next time I would be cleaning the blood stains from the boat myself.
During the training session we took a lot of photos. We borrowed a RIB with the driver (Krystian) from our Slovenian friends. Goły got into it and made extensive use of the Nikon. Now we know for sure that without a RIB it would be impossible for us to tack the boat upwind through narrow passages. We thought that this would have been possible if we'd mastered the maneuvers better, but Krystian and Andraz put us right (Krystian said: "This is a lazy cow").
Yesterday, a sea fair opened in Portoroz. Our boat has been attracting a lot of attention. It's one of the smallest boats in the port, but the flags of our sponsors on the mast and the colourful hull arouse great interest. A couple of times a day we have to answer questions concerning the race we are to take part in, the qualifications, the places we are to sail and if it is cold in Poland.
 Translated by Anna Greczuk, consultant Joan Harris
Trainings in Slovenia (part 1)
Trainings in Slovenia (part 2)
Trainings in Slovenia (part 3) |
