The results.... 1st Near & Farr 2nd Rovel 3rd Satisfaction ****more reports coming soon**** Race report from Near & Farr The morning of the wayward Scott asked if he could crew with us as Bronny was not feeling well. We kindly declined his offer as we wanted to take advantage of the double handed rule and are still getting used to her. Would this come back to bite us?? We were the last boat to leave the marina. Unfortunately there would only be three boats racing and we would be the only double handed boat. The opposition we rather larger and heavier than us, we would be up against the mighty Rovel -with a crew of six and Satisfaction aka "the Big blue boat also with a crew of six. We would start on 18 minutes past eleven followed by Satisfaction & Rovel at 24 minutes past. Off we started "all by ourselves" with a nice fast reach to Kauri point. Rounding the point realised it was going to be a dead downwind with gull winged head sail. The closer we got the harbour bridge the more the other boats seemed to be gaining with their giant sails. We managed to maintain a good lead to North head and realised that there was a big squall heading our way. We gybed the head sail over so as not to get slammed by the squall and risk crash gybing the main. We were heading towards northern leading and got a big wind shift so we had to gull wing again. Then the squall hit us and we were heading directly for northern leading,thinking this is not good "we can not come up or down" and did not want o risk gybing in the heavier wind. We thought it would be best to furl the head sail..... bugger, bugger, bugger the furler was jammed.... so we maintained our course and scraped past northern leading (with out scraping the boat) and were heading towards Rangi wharf. After the squall went through we managed to gybe the main and get back on some sort of heading. However this did not last long as "samantha went up on the bow to sort out the furling line...."... this time we were maintained a course for Browns island way of the rhum line and in the other direction. With satisfaction and Rovel having maintained a direct course they were closing quickly. Duncan was not wanting to put Samantha under pressure.. but kept asking how long it would take to fix. After doing a few more miles we managed to gybe back on course and still maintain our lead. Having gone so far down we managed to gain some speed by doing a bigger angle and took off through the motohuie channel. As the wind came forward we got faster and faster "yea harr" and managed to nail the finish in good form if not for a few cuts, bruises and rope burns to Samantha. If we had not got extra time we may not have got another first as Rovel only finished four minutes behind us. So no going double handed did not bite us... although our main sheet did bite Samantha a bit! Great race, great weekend with great friends. |
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