RPNYC Turkish Rally – 3 Nov 2024

Crew: Geoff, Tunch, Jamie, Leah, Funny, Sophie, Mavis.

Forecast: Southerly 20 kts gusting 30 kts easing to 15 kts in the afternoon.

The RPNYC joined with the Turkish Embassy to celebrate the anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye. Each boat would have guests from the Turkish community aboard. My sailing buddy Tunch who is Turkish and now living in Auckland, jumped at the chance to come to Wellington and join in the fun.

Prior to the race we went to the club for the briefing and enjoyed the delicious Turkish coffees and Turkish delight. We collected our Turkish guest Mavis and were given a Turkish flag to fly on the boat. Sophie also joined our crew.

At the skippers briefing Shayne gave us an explanation of how the ‘Rabbit Start Sequence’ would work. See here.

The only problem was the wind. It was forecast to ease off around midday but was showing no signs of doing that yet. The AP flag was hoisted for a one hour delay.

We walked over to Chaffers Marina and did our crew safety briefing on Halo, finished rigging the boat and hoisted the Turkish flag.

Still no sign of the wind abating. After announcing a second delay Race Control eventually announced “AP over A” with the rally abandoned. Soon after that the wind started dropping (Murphy’s Law) to around 15 kts gusting 20. A few other boats were now getting out on the water so we decided to go out for a blat around the harbour.

We put a reef in the mainsail and with the small no. 3 jib rigged, we cast off at 1307 hrs. Jamie took charge of the helm as we hoisted the sails. Funny handled mainsheet and the rest of us did sail trim. The wind was manageable most of the time but with frequent gusts to keep up the excitement.

After a few laps around Lambton Harbour we set sail past Pt Jerningham into the full force of the southerly. Stronger but less gusty. We got up to 7 kts boat speed at times as we crossed the top of Evans Bay.