1st Phantasy 2nd Waterwitch 3rd Firsty 4th Eye Spy 5th Mindbender 6th Nona Race Report for Surprise 2 by JK on Eye Spy The Course: No. 3 The Weather:20+ Knots from the SW The Team:Only two of us,Trev and me as`The Crew` A Mark Foy Race,So we claim 3 minutes being 2-handed and start as scratch boat. Bad start as `The Crew` gets the headsail Tangled just before our start time.Trevs sorts it out and off we go A good sail leading all the way to Meola and Chelsea but on the way back up to Meola it all goes wrong! `The Crew` hadnt tied the Headsail sheets correctly – yep one lets go,Trev goes forward,`The Crew` takes helm,gets into irons,once we are going again `The Crew` doesn’t sheet in quick enough,so, another tack to avoid Waterwitch. Finally around Meola to find we are now 4th behind Phantasy,Waterwitch and Mindbender. At Chelsea Mindbender does a poor tack and lets us thru (`The Crew` feels a bit better now!). Two tacks to Kauri Point and eased sheets to the Finish (Thank goodness as by now `The Crew` is knackered) Result:4th behind Phantasy,Firsty and Waterwitch but the first `88 in! p.s. Apparently several Boats had gear Failures,not so Eyespy,Eyespy had `The Crew` Failures All the best for Xmas see ya in the New Year Yours JK Race report from Firsty Another Mark Foy start at Hobbie for the last race before Christmas. Good to have Wayne back on the foredeck and Tim and Bruce in the cockpit. Pretty windy coming down to Hobby so we went for the No3 headsail. It was a lonely place at Hobby as we waited for our time to start and watched the other boats head down harbour and get flattened. We start in a lull and drift out over the start line until passed the bomb dump and the wind is suddenly up to 19 kts, on a tight reach down the harbour. We appear to be catching one boat pretty quick until we realise that it is a cruising boat under headsail only, not in our race. At Meola we go for the No2 kite right on the mark with the Wayne working hard on the Fordeck and Bruce and Tim working hard in the cockpit to get the kite up the last 2 metres. With the wind around 20 kts TWS we are having a good kite ride... until the kite comes fluttering down. Broken halyard! Oh well, with the outgoing tide we are fast approaching the mark anyhow, so we clean up before going round Chelsea to come on the wind to Meaola again. Everything is hard on board for the beat, except the jib halyard looks a little slack, so the jib is running a little full for this wind strength. We manage to pick up Nona on the beat and round the mark into a Gybe. Thoughts of the masthead kite are raised but dropped with the realisation that as soon we had it up it would be time to drop with this outgoing tide. This time around Chelsea we put on some halyard tension before going around the mark then come into the mark onto the wind for the final beat up the harbour. The wind has freshened a few knots and we are seeing 23 knots TWS on the beat as we try to keep out of the tide. Manage to get Mindbender on the wind then finally manage to get past Eye Spy around Kauri Pt as we try to keep up out of the tide. As we ease sheets to round Kauri Pt, we manage to put a little ground on Eye Spy. We are trying hard to catch the big long Water Witch as we ease into the reach - broach - reach up to Hobby for the finish. We couldn't make up any ground on Water Witch as they use all of their waterline length to push to the finish. Congratulations to Coach on Phantasy in first place and Gary on Waterwitch in second. We come in about 1 minute behind in third. The boys all worked hard for a good afternoon on the water. Thanks for the sailing committee and all the volunteers for allowing us to get out on the water. Cheers Craig. |
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