European Yacht of the year tests in Ijmuiden

Arrival to Ijmuiden that is lying on the entrance to Amsterdam’s docks brought back memories from our previous life. Instead of warm blue waters of Adriatic before us stood murky wild waters of North Atlantic. With the background of gray skies drizzle and temperature in young teens the stage was set for the selection of European Yacht of the year 2010.
Seascape was nominated to the selection with 5 others in the group of special boats. From our competition only K650 showed up, the rest are obviously going for much more tame sailing conditions in Barcelona later this year.

First day was untypical warm and almost without wind. So we will skip it and focus on the second.
15-20kt of wind and gray skies greeted us on the morning of day 2. Torqueedo 401 electric engine kindly borrowed to us by Marko from SLO 007 proved to be just strong enough to push us trough against the wind out from the marina.
On schedule were 7 journalist from 7 countries that were exchanged on the boat by RIB. Me and Kristian stayed on the boat as crew while journalist took helm. Usually we started by one round in flat waters behind the breakwater and then made another trough crazy tide-against-the-wind waves on the exit of the channel.
My respect to journalist who managed to control Seascape surfing down the waves with speed regularly hitting 14 knots and on occasions exceeding 15.  It must be quite tricky to change the wheel of aluminium Allures 51 with carbon tiler of Seascape.
Some photos that were kindly sent to us by Axel Nissen-Lie from Norwegian magazine www.seilas.no

Our Belgian owner of BEL 017 Eric Van Nieuwenhuyse was kind enough to borrow us his Seascape so we were spared from trailing Seascape across half of the Europe. Also thanks to Gregoire Beauduin, our Benelux dealer for his help.