Racing into the Heart of the Country

摘要

With a stiff wind behind us, blowing 25 to 30 knots off the Baltic Sea, the 20′3″ LOA Swedish pilot boat OLIVIA had at last found the breeze she had been waiting for. Her sprit-rigged mainsail and her jib were both drawing perfectly. Occasionally we would take exhilarated delight as she shot a few yards ahead of the three other pilot boats nearby, with a following sea sending her for a wildly yawing surf on a froth of white water. Then our smiles would fade as an adjacent boat would surge ahead in turn. They were four mares, these local boats, each with a bit in her teeth. These were four of the 27 boats in the weeklong Second Blekinge Archipelago Raid, and on Day 6, it seemed, our hour had come.