Crew: Geoff, Murray, Jaime, Juliet, Juliette, Alex.
PW Forecast: N 7-14 kts gusts up to 16 kts.
A lovely winter’s day for some ‘champagne sailing’ in the RPNYC Winter Series Race. We all met up on Halo and prepped the boat with spinnaker sheets and our big no. 1 genoa. Juliette’s friend Alex from France had never sailed before. After a safety briefing we cast off from Chaffers at 1123 hrs.
The Port Nic clubhouse was showing course #39: Start – 25P – 4P – 16S – Finish. Nice and easy.
We hoisted the sails and did some practice loops around Lambton Harbour. Crew positions were Jaime and Juliet on sail trim, Murray on mainsheet, Juliette on bow and me on helm. The wind was around 10 kts dropping to 6 kts at times.
We timed our start well with clear air. The fleet separated into two groups as we sailed on a beam reach towards Pt Jerningham. Halo was leading the slower group of boats as we rounded the mark.
We had the maxi spinnaker rigged ready to hoist for the run down Evans Bay but when we tried to haul it up something went wrong. The kite was twisted. After dropping the spinnaker and re-attaching the sheets we finally got it up and flying well. In the process we lost our lead over White Cavalier. Shikari was also breathing down our neck.
We didn’t bother to drop the genoa with 15 kts of wind behind us and we were already pretty close to the Shoal Pile mark.
We rounded the mark and then had a longish beat up the harbour. The northerly was still blowing at around 15 kts.
As we neared the Ngauranga mark the wind was getting really shifty. Frustratingly we ended up having to do multiple tacks to get around the mark. We saw White Cavalier and Shikari behind us having the same problems.
We hadn’t had time to re-pack the spinnaker properly so we decided to deploy the medium kite for the next run back to Oriental Bay. It went up without problems.
We needed to work the guy and sheet quite a bit to keep the kite trimmed correctly as Murray steered us directly down to the mark. White Cavalier had a bigger spinnaker and were able to pass us. Shikari initially got ahead of us but then seemed to have some difficulty with their kite. We passed them again before hoisting the genoa and dropping our spinnaker and rounding mark 16.
After rounding the mark at Oriental Bay we were back on a beam reach for the last short leg to the finish line in front of the Port Nic clubhouse.
As we were dropping the sails Mark Waters on Shikari called out to us “well sailed guys!” Thanks Mark 🙂
We motored into our berth at Chaffers berth tying up at 1405 hrs. After tidying up the boat and packing up the genoa we put on the kettle for teas and coffees. Thanks Juliette for contributing a great home-baked cake!
Back at the clubhouse for prize-giving the results were announced. We came third on handicap. Well done Team Halo!
Halo Log Book 