Race report from Eye Spy After battle talk was done & dusted Saturday night over a nice meal & a few drinks onboard roval in man o war it was decided that the race start would be 10:30 destination onetangi. Over the weekend we have myself & Jenny onboard the Eye Spy as it would seem Trevor's starting to enjoy his home comfort's onboard Roval, like hot showers etc & ice maker for Rummy's, luckily for me & Jen tho he kindly offered the Eye Spy for us to use. As we turn up to the start line we all hoist sails & have a fleet start Wahoo race on, as we head out we have Jen on the helm & I'm trimming + galley wench duties, ofcourse this weekend being the first time Jen has really ever sailed a boat, quick crash course a, as we get round the corner of bottom end we start cranking sheets in & the breeze starts filling in, including a few good gusts Jen decides to hand the helm over to me & take up galley wench duties, heading up the coast line we hear the call & decision was made to change destination to Waikalabubu which suited us as we were out the back & getting good lift & looking like we could make it on one tack, as we head up to rakino we manage to get ahead of Roval & Shakina with me steering at GPS like a hawk probably could of made it on the one tack but decided on the safe option & tack out to see Roval charging up on port looking good so i decide to dip rather than make a nuisance of myself one more tack & off to the finish in 3rd. A quick nana nap then over to Roval for prize giving, drinks & bbq. Totally enjoyable weekend away with great company. Thanks again to Trevor & everyone that came out & made it an enjoyable weekend in our beautiful paradise that we have as our back yard ******************************************************************** Race report from Rovel Man-o-war bay saw the (somewhat) inevitable congregation of the Hobsonville Yachts, and by Saturday night after a couple of wee sherries (OK copious quantities of rum!) it was decided that a race to Owhinaki the next morning would be fantastic idea. The rules of the race were, everyone up anchor at 10.30am and head off from there. Thank god for day light saving as “10.30am” came and went with limited amount of movement, luckily it was still only 9.30am so we weren’t actually late for the start! Trevor was so determined to race he even took the mainsheet cover off… a pretty rare occurrence on Roval, mainly because he hates pulling up the halyard! But we have extra muscle power on board with Dom and Hilton … so it was all on. Motoring out towards Pakatoa the sails were hoisted, and Roval lead the fleet of Near and Farr, Eye Spy and Shakira out round Stony Batter. Early wind indications were for a nice reach all the way round, but as we approached hooks bay the wind started to swing move into the south west. Not so great for Roval who doesn’t do close hauled. Near and Farr were champing out our transom, but the Mighty Roval got into the groove and had a convincing lead as we rounded the end of waiheke. Unfortunately the inability to point above about 80 degrees meant that we had to take a very wide line towards Maria Island, whilst the rest managed a much closer in-shore course. However, by this point the wind shift was such that Owhinaki wouldn’t be looking so good, so we had a chat with the rest of the fleet and decided that home bay was a better bet…. but eventually (and with was nothing to do with the fact that we were sailing straight at Why-Kill-a-Booboo) we decided that that would be a much better place to spend the night, so lets all agree that as the final destination! Most of the race we were so far down that we were totally out of touch with the rest of the fleet, however, as we approached Rakino we realised the race was still on… Shakira was passing only a few boat lengths in front of us, and eye spy was close on her tail!! So, we started to concentrate on this racing m’larky again and after a couple of superb tacks, and some great boat speed from Roval, we had managed to pass Shakira and Eye Spy, but had to do some seriously tight pinching to make it past South Island… but we made it! So where was Near and Farr??? Had we won?? No, Near and Farr were happily ensconced in Why-Kill-a-Booboo Bay, the champions again! So congratulations to Near and Farr, thanks to Trevor, Dom and Hilton for Excellent Crew work, and thanks to the Hobby family for another Awesome weekend! *************************************************************** Race report from Near & Farr We woke up at nine am (after adjusting our watches the night before) and I reminded Duncan that the plan was to race to Owhinaki. He was not brimming with enthusiasm and mumbled that we would do our own thing... hmmm, so while he made our marvellous breakfast of scrambled eggs and choritzo I got the boat ready for racing. I was concerned that we might be late, however breakfast eaten, washing up done and anchor up in lightening speed. We found Shekina pootleing around and hoisted our main, and Eye Spy and Rovel joined us. Rovel was the first to start, followed quickly by Eye Spy, us and finally Grant. And we were off ....with Rovel and Eye Spy infront of us. Reaching, then pole on and goose winging, at which point we pasted Eye Spy and were on the hunt for Rovel. The wind came forward and taking the pole of took longer than anticipated so we lost ground and height. Trimming, more trimming and more trimming we we started pointing higher than the others.... "oh the joys of owning a Farr 1020!!". We had good boat speed and were making great progress. A small speed bump of having to go down due to another Farr 1020 on our race course... obviously he did not realise that we were racing... hey ho. I contemplated using my booming voice to shout "dont you know we are racing" however thought the better of it, he was single handed and the volume of my voice might have given him a heart attack...I have been known to even give myself a fright when shouting "Starboarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd" I took over helming for a while while duncan relaxed, until it was time for him to take over when I decided to wash the starboard deck.... we both agreed that it looked much better for the wash. Duncan back on the helm and concentrating. We kept an eye on the rest of the fleet and noted that Rovel seemed to have set a course of Portugal??!! Shekina and Eye spy were following us but we had better height. A call was made to change the destination twice and eventually agreed to finish at Why kill a booboo... good choice especially for Rovel. We could not quite make it past South island and had to do a couple of tacks... but we were nearly there.... I thought about singing my song " alll by ourselvessssssssss" but quite frankly I knew the rest of the fleet were not too far behind and we were busy racing. We reached why kill a booboo, dropped our anchor and cracked a cold beer or two while we waited for the rest of the fleet to arrive. It was a great day to be out on the water and race the other HYC boats. And as always we had an awesome weekend! Bring on the final wayward! No booboos were hurt during the after party! |
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