Ladies Day; Tuesday is Monday’s sister, just not as pretty…

August 9, 2016

This morning the weather forecast looked worrisome. 10-12kt in the morning and winds dying in the afternoon. But when we motored out, it looked like there was slightly more breeze then forecasted.

We were out in the starting area early to do our pre-race routine, which consists of pinging the ends of the start line, check the position of the line, sail four upwinds, sail the direction of the first leg and a kite set and douse. In the meantime we try to have a look at the other classes starting, to see if we can learn from their starts.

The committee sent us off on a downwind start again towards the East. These are tough starts, as the tide swept us towards the line with 2.5 kts. We decided to start from the most Southern end of the line. The Northern end was the most upwind. Our Southern end was slightly closer to the first mark, in slightly better tide and the wind angle was slightly better.

As Laura managed to get her time and distance right, with a little help and a little hinder from Expedition, we blasted off in good clear air.

My most negative comment on the day, was that the race course was not particularly nice. We had a reach, a fetch, a fetch, another reach, a fetch, another fetch, a very uneven beat, a short kite ride and a beat towards the Finish.

At the start we were close to our opponents J’ronimo and Jackeroo. As we managed to sail over the top of Jackeroo, we only had J’ronimo in front of us at the first mark. As we could not do much in the next two fetches, we took the opportunity to overtake her on the kite ride towards ‘51 Stokes Bay Sailing Club.’

We were still in wind blowing about 9.0 kts. On the next two fetches towards Mother Bank and Browndown we managed to extend our lead. As can be seen on our track; the next leg from Browdown towards West Ryde Middle, the wind shifted 25 degrees to the right. In the forecast the wind was supposed to go left, so I did not anticipate on this. The result, we sailed the outer side of the banana, but other boats like Vanilla (which goes well with banana), sailed the inside of the banana. I believe we must have been well in ahead of all other boats, but especially Vanilla and Haven K-Enigma managed to get much closer to us.

The wind died completely when we rounded West Ryde Middle and we had a bad gybe-set, so our main opponents came closer and closer to us. We found new breeze and gybed towards the ‘Laid mark-b’. We had a late, but excellent rounding and headed up towards the finish. But the most exciting racing was in in last 20 minutes towards the finish. Around Norris, the wind was extremely patchy and shifty. With many lighter boats around us we struggled, but survived. We had an eye on Vanilla. When we finally crossed the Finish line after 2 hrs and 35 minutes, we were still in front, but just not enough. Vanilla beat us by 18 seconds on rating and Haven-K Enigma by 3 minutes.

Well sailed everybody! Laura did a magnificent job keeping the boat in goods speeds especially during the lighter stuff. The trimmers Leen, Joost D and Hidde helped her a lot. Floris and Joost N did great work on the foredeck. Harry played a major role in keeping us on the rhumb line and sailing the shortest course. And Herman…. Herman helped everybody, the foredeck, the trimmers…. He fixed a hole in the kite and made a nice movie of today and yesterday; have a look!

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=554ibSJL0iA&w=560&h=315]

 

Again, we had a nice debrief at the lawn:

With one discard race, we would now be third, so we have to stay focussed and have good results for the rest of the regatta.

Cheers,

Boj