Well the Skipper had some lame excuse that he had to work, and the first mate was off working on his own boat... so this left Lisa to organise the A+ team of Nicol, JK, Greg Jones, Stuart and McKenzie Wills... but with a 14 minute handicap we were going to have our work cut out for us!  And then, to add insult to injury, Blue beat was starting on 6 minutes.  

The team turned up nice and promptly so we were off the mooring and heading for the start line by 12noon in a nice 12 to 15 knts, and beautiful sunshine.  We hanked on the No 1, hoisted the main and had a lovely sail out from the Hobsonville Club.  But as 1pm approached, the gusts started getting somewhat bigger, and we were getting rather overpowered even with just the main up, so we decided to do a quick pre-start sail change down to the No. 2.  

Champing at the bit to get underway we watched as the vast majority of the fleet sailed off into the distance... but finally the 14-minute call went and we were off!  OK, not the best start in the world... my excuse is its probably only the 2nd start I have ever helmed eye spy!

With a tight reach round to Rona we quickly overtook Nimble who had started with us and were gaining nicely on the rest of the fleet.  As the wind started to swing, a lot of the boats were getting knocked, but with some wicked main management from Greg, we managed to gain height and make it though to Rona on one tack.  The reach back to Meola did see us a little underpowered with the No 2, but it was too tight for a kite, and a sail change would have cost us more time.  Heading back to Rona we were neck and neck with Nimble and Origin, but to leeward.  We were trying for all the height we could but were not quite going to make Rona, so we sacrificed a bit of height for speed and got clear ahead of Origin and Nimble to complete a tack onto starboard.  Tacking back just above them, they both got through and we followed them into the mark rounding... but, miracle of miracles, a gap opened up and we were able to do a tight rounding, and, thanks to some awesome crew work, managed to come out above and ahead of both of them... great work guys!

Approaching Kauri point around for the final leg to the finish we had Firsty charging down on us, and could see a few boats getting caught in the dreaded Kauri Point hole.  So we kept wide and were gaining on some of them.  But, inevitably, they sailed out of the hole before we got there, so we ended up last over the line for the Hobby Boats.  But it was a lovely sail, and thanks to the crew :-)