Race Report from Arosa The North Western Motorway, 4.30pm, Friday afternoon we started our "Night Race to Kawau". With a short cut and dash down the pontoon we traded the rat race for a boat race and made it to the start line with a few minutes to spare. Eye Spy and Firsty quickly opened up a gap. Blue Beat was still close enough that I could try (copy) a few things. We quickly found a mode that allowed us to maintain a similar speed. We were lucky as the wind curved around North Head, it allowed us to come up to port avoiding a large loss. After passing Rangitoto we decided to head East in search of more wind and Blue Beat disappeared West towards the coast. 5 hours later we were approaching the Tiri Channel in darkness, when I notice a navigation light to port. As he tacked along side us, I made out the shape to be Blue Beat. Literally side by side we sailed for the next hour. With the wind dying, the crew snoring below, me struggling to stay awake and with 6 Nm to go, I decided to admit defeat and motor into Coppermine Bay for a sleep. Big thank you to everyone for making us feel welcome and organising such a cool event. We would love to have the opportunity to come out again for a rematch. Simon and Cherlin. Race report from Eye Spy: Start at 1800hrs they said………..a few hours and you will be there they said.. Our start at Taikata was pretty good and we were just behind “Firsty” . It wasn’t long before we edged ahead of him. This put smiles on my crew. The crew was Cristin and Mark. Its going to be a tight reach all the way to the finish so we tuck the kite away and have the Full main and No.1 headsail. We know its going to lighten off but we don’t know when. We have a comfortable lead over “Blue Beat” and figure that if we sail on port tack towards Rakino we would be tacking back to Tiri channel as the tide changed. Good plan but Blue Beat had done a runner up the east coast bays. Once dark we lost sight of Gaza and now the question had to be asked……..who made the correct call? Firsty notified us that he was withdrawing as the wind got very light before Tiri Channel. We persevered and got into a nice breeze on the last leg to Kawau. Mark went to bed at Tiri so Cristin and I “dug in” and showed our stubborn streak until finally I lost steerage half way down Motorekireki Island. We withdraw at 0210 and motored to Mansion house Bay. I guess the trophy stays in the cupboard till next year eh. Great weekend had by all! The Roval "race report"??! Well after some heated debate about where the start line was, and some serious argy bargy in the pre-start, we were off! But this was going to be a seriously hard-fought race, with all the vessels crossing the start line together there was some close jostling. With Satisfaction 3 up, they were exercising some definitely dubious distraction techniques.... and were they breaching rule 42? Roval had also decided to opt for the more subtle, underwater, rule 42 breach, only to have satisfaction collide with said propulsion, and cause a capsize. Meanwhile, Blue Beat was powering off into the distance, followed closely by Crocodile. Roval finally broke free of the start area in hot pursuit of near and farr... who were now far in the distance. But roval showed her power, and, by the first mark was hot on the tail of Crocodile. But Crocodile was not going to go down easily and was snapping hard at Roval during the mark rounding. Luckily Dolphin joined the fray, and both roval and Dolphin managed to overtake crocodile. But blue beat was a full half leg ahead... could they make it? It wasn't looking good, but then Goldie (having still not escaped the start area) started to luff blue beat, would she managed to hold him off long enough? Sadly no, Blue beats, superior speed and maneuverability paid off, and he slipped past to get a well-deserved win!! 😁 |
Race Reports >