Crew: Geoff, Anastasia, Murray, Malcolm, Patricia,
Forecast: Variable 5 knots. Southerly 10 knots developing for a time in the afternoon. High tide 1000 hrs.
Saturday was looking like another great ‘champagne sailing’ day. All the crew met at Chaffers and after rigging the light Genoa No. 1 and setting up the spinnaker sheets and gybe preventer we cast off at 1122 hrs for some practise sailing before the race. Positions were Anastasia on mainsheet, Malcolm and Patricia on sail trim, Murray on helm and me on foredeck. We beat our way down Evans Bay into the 10 kts southerly and then timed a practice run to the start line from the end of the marina breakwater. Just under two minutes at about 4.5 kts boat speed.
Sailing Commodore Phil announced the course over the club’s Whatsapp group: Start Box start, course # H5. Ngauranga (4) to Somes west (5) to finish at start box. All nice and very clear.
The start sequence commenced with the green division light at just after 1255 hrs. Using our practice run we were able to cross the start just 10 seconds after the gun and quickly hoisted the maxi spinnaker and dropped the genoa.
Usurper, who was behind us on port tack with their spinnaker up, soon sailed across our bow heading towards Pt. Jerningham. We were on starboard tack and maintained a direct course to the Ngauranga mark. Grenadier were just in front of us as we ‘hunted’ them until they decided to gybe and veer off to the left. We continued on our run to the mark with the wind dead astern.
Tamerlane had their big fat kite up and eventually caught up with us by the time we got to the top mark.
As we rounded the Ngauranga mark, Tamerlane managed to cut inside and sail past us on our windward side. For the close-reach towards Somes Island we pulled out all the stops and managed to edge past Tamerlane as well as keeping Grenadier at bay.
We sailed past the Somes West mark at 1351 hrs and continued on the same tack for a couple of minutes before going about onto a long port beat towards Evans Bay. The wind was now over 15 kts and gusting up to 20 kts. We were over-powered with our big genoa but we trimmed in hard on sheets, cunningham and back-stay and with Murray pinching close to the wind we were able to maintain good height towards Evans Bay.
Once in the bay we did four more tacks before crossing the line at 1337 hrs. A great race and nice to finish ahead of Tamerlane and Grenadier this time.
The results were not published until Tuesday where we learned that we had won the race on handicap. Well done team Halo!
RaceQs Replay for Halo and Upcycled: http://raceQs.com/event/1516822
Halo Log Book 