Closing day was a day of light breezes....and strong tides which made it tricky conditions for the competing boats! Results 1st Nona (best start, fastest around the course and best dressed crew) 2nd Mindbender 3rd Eye Spy 4th Blue Beat 5th Appaloosa 6th Waterwitch DNF Satisfaction DNS....( but did motor around the course) Six Gun Justice Mindbender Race Report Away from the marina early for this one, with it being Ruth’s first proper race on the boat, we had a practice of spinnaker hoist and drop so she knew what to expect. With the Mark Foy start the line was still a little congested, by the time we got over the line fighting the tide and angles we were abeam of Satisfaction far later than our handicap minute 11. The first leg to LSO saw the 3 other 88s sailing away to a healthy lead spearheaded by Nona, upon rounding for the first time, Nona was back at the the ODM completing her first downhill skate, again we played follow the leader and not hoist a kite. Blue Beat and Eye Spy looked to be locked into their own battle as they headed to Beachhaven for the first time, after rounding ODM to head of to yet again admire the stern of other 88s the breeze filled in rather nicely and we were off seeing 5kt for the first time of the race. Ruth was doing a great job on the helm and pointing Mindbender in the right places to miss the moored boats and stay in the breeze. After Beachaven Blue Beat was on the opposite side of the track and the next crossing we realised that we had made good and picked off the first 88 we were in pursuit of, next for Eye Spy, we are coming Trev! After following the Westpac Kite down wind we had to put some great uphill sailing to have half a chance of catching Trev, as still Nona was sailing away from everyone. Some stage we looked to have an overlap on Eye Spy and cam through and tack that everyone would have heard, “the pole, the pole” rather quietly whispered... And Eye Spy sailed on by again. Split tacks and good wind saw us cross Trev before the top mark and had us on a good lay, hoping that Eye Spy didn’t hold us out to long as the water would gotten shallow real fast! A good rounding kite up and we sailing on past Eye Spy downhill, next on the list was Nona. The final lap was spent trying to be error free, stay in the breeze and try and finish with Nona in sight. Denise and her German rockstars had her boogying today, well done Guys!. Thanks again to Nigel and the tower crew and all that make Hobsonville a great club. Thanks to my crew, hopefully Ruth races more often as 2nd is Mindbenders best placing since owning the boat. Race Report from Nona Closing day dawns, cloudy, not much wind and an early start, 11am with high tide at 1300. The course is a local round the cans , South outer distance marker the ODM and around the Beachaven poles- due to power boat and jet ski racing from Westhaven to Island Bay. Not much room for anyone else. My crew is a motley one with Mark P out with a hernia, and Bronwyn bailing out in the morning. We start with John, The German dynamic duo of Sophie and Karolin and Juniors, who were first time sailors, Brooke and Poppy. No spinnakers – oh dear how sad. HEHEHE. It’s a mark foy start with Six Gun Justice giving us a heads up of the conditions, wind almost on the nose and strong incoming tide. We watch their start technique of dragging the ODM closer to the first mark before Darcy is spotted doing a number of contortions with his legs over the side of the boat to dislodge the ODM. We start 10 minutes after Six Gun with Blue Beat and Mindbender one minute behind us and Eye Spy one minute behind them with a start fleet of eight boats. We surge ahead with the four knots of breeze and tack up to South Orange, around and ease out the sails to the ODM around and over to Beachaven and South Orange. We end up completing four laps with Juniors Brooke and Poppy alternating on the helm on the downward legs and each on the last two windward legs. Wind strength ranges from four to ten knots and about a fifteen degree angle variation. We had the opportunity to explore the Beachaven Bay before a sudden tack was needed as the depth went from 4.8 to 1.2 m in a blink of an eye. The sail was a challenging one, but it remained dry with the dynamic duo and Juniors enjoying themselves and we managed to win the race and the Best Dressed Salty Old dogs prize (the parrot was the winning ace for us) A big thanks to the start tower crew, the ladies of the Social Committee who put on a very filling spread and Dave on the bar. Roll on winter racing starting 12 June. NONa Race report from Eye Spy: Well………last race of the summer series and seems as if its been a while since the crew were together. We have an addition to the crew with Alice from the youth sailing team. Gill and Mark make up the rest of the crew as JK has just got over the flu and decided not to sail. We lined up the start but were confused as some of the boats who were supposed to start in front of us were in fact behind. Six gun decided to nudge the ODM around the harbour but that’s no excuse for getting your start time wrong eh. Nona appeared to start on time and slowly increased her lead. We had a great battle in light winds with Blue Beat and finally cleared away during one of our kite runs. The course was short but due to the light winds we only managed four laps. During the third lap MindBender slipped past us under kite. We had decided the kite may have been counterproductive in the light wind but turned out to be wrong…….oh well. So third place on the water and third on handicap. Next race we will be newly anti-fouled. Great to see a good turnout. Thanks to the competitors and the tower team. Race report from Six Gun, Dunc, Sam, Cristin and I had nice motor out of the marina and headed for HYC. Dunc was keen for a kite run so the ladies took over helming and navigation and Dunc and I set about hooking up a downhaul for the pole, spinnaker sheets and tweekers. We got down towards the club and had a practice run with the kite and new set up. Under the watchful eye of Sam the kite went straight up and filled. Awesome! Now, why dont we practice getting it down? Easy as with Sam on the halyard we packed the kite straight back in the bag. We got to the club and checked out the start line as we would be starting first. We had about 5 knots of breeze on the nose and about 2 knots of tide. Couple this with a very short start line - thanks Trev - and we knew it was going to be a big ask. Six Gun still runs a fixed prop and with light winds and fast tide we had to make a sweet plan to get over the line and lead the field away to the first mark. This is where the fun started. We had about 27 goes at getting across the line. There was no 'making tack' for us. Each time we tacked for the line we got washed sideways. We tried and tried again but to no avail. We even tried to move the start buoy out a little bit but this didn't help either. Then Nona came through and made it look easy. Sh*t!!! I guess everyone else learned from us! We kept trying to start the race and after 20mins all other boats had started. Sam had a great idea! Why dont we have a drink? Everything always works out fine if we have a drink. Sweet - beers and bourbons all round and we hatch a plan. We will put the motor on and keep our sails up. No one will know. It'll be sweet. So we did! We finally made that bloody start line and cleared that troublesome mark. We sail over to Satisfaction at Beachhaven and skipper Phil cant believe that we are going so well! Thats crew work for you. We had a lot of fun and yes - we stayed out of everyone's way and we completed a lap of the coarse - with a nice kite run back to the club house mark. We waited and watched everyone finish and headed back to the marina. We had a great time back at the club with excellent food prepared by Sharon and the house team. Well done Nona for making it look easy and thanks to Sammie and Dunc for the ride. DB |
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