Vingilot: Reunion of fellow students

“We are slowly getting a bit more tired this way with the final miles ahead of us,” Arnoud Luijten, skipper of the Vingilot De Ridder One Off 36, admits over the phone. Nevertheless, they are still pushing hard: “We are now on our way to the Sport A and then hope to get to the Sport B before we head for the finish line.” Meanwhile, the counter stands at over 154 miles. From starting point Den Oever, the crew opted for as many “horizontal raks” as possible, due to the north wind. “This is to keep racks open, which you can then sail again later. So we first went up and down to the LC1, then to the SB8 and then we crossed towards Urk and did some races there. When the wind was northeast, we started doing diagonal races. Now we sail a little more the north/south raks, because the wind is coming from the east. So we slowly go with the change in wind direction.” The crew consists of five people. They don’t have a real watch system, but they do sleep. “We have two people who steer and someone who does navigation, but we can all do ‘other things’ as well. We don’t have a stringent watch system. If someone is sleeping well, you let them lie down for a while. Or if one of us is tired and wants to lie down for a while, we can do that too. We’re pretty flexible.” The mood is also good: “It’s cozy on board. We have a regular group except for one guy this year. The 24 Hours is actually always a reunion of fellow students for us.”

From touring class to ORC

Two years ago, team Vingilot won in the touring class. “If we had entered in the touring class last year, we would have won it again. When we won, we switched to ORC. Otherwise we wouldn’t have thought it was so fair to the other tour sailors, who are a little less concerned with speed anyway.” At the time of calling, Vingilot is third in the ORC 2 rankings, but to Luijten this says little. “It depends on when you enter something (the rounded buoy) and a lot of people haven’t done anything yet. That’s a real shame, though. The game is most fun if everyone does fill in everything directly or if it is done automatically via AIS.”