EBYMBC Summer Series 15 Feb 2025

Crew: Geoff, Murray, John, Max.

Forecast: N 10 kts rising to 15 kts in the morning then easing to variable 5 kts late.

Our new crew member, Max, a post-grad student from Netherlands, joined John and me at Chaffers Marina. Max has centre-board sailing experience on lakes. His English is good but he had to learn from scratch all the English boat terminology. Luckily he’s a fast learner.

After the safety briefing we cast off from the marina at 1108 hrs. Another beautiful summer’s day!

With the #1 heavy genoa and full mainsail hoisted we did a few practice tacks before heading down Evans Bay to tie up at the wharf. The course was set as H14; Start (on water) – Mark 4 Ngauranga – Mark 5 Somes – Mark 11 Korokoro – Finish (on water).

Murray joined us and we cast off from the wharf at 1230 hrs to motor sail up to the committee boat. Pania, with Neil and Rick on board, was positioned in the middle of the bay between Greta Point and Shark Bay.

We did a couple of practice approaches to the the line and decided to start on starboard tack close to Pania. We timed it well, crossing the line windward of Usurper and ahead of the rest of the fleet.

Incantare and Usurper were soon ahead of us but we maintained our lead over the others as we sailed close-hauled out of Evans Bay in just one tack.

We got a good lift as we passed Pt Halswell. We’re going well!

After rounding marks 4 and 5 we rounded the Korokoro mark at 1421 hrs. Still ahead of Ruby, (Matt’s new Jeanneau Sun Odyssey), Upcycled and Grenadier.

The wind had eased off as we neared the mark so I felt confident in selecting the maxi spinnaker for our run down to the finish line.

Big mistake! I had omitted to check the wind vane before the kite hoist and wrongly assumed it would be a nice easy run. As soon as we had the kite up we realised that we were very much on a beam reach with the pole pushing hard against the forestay. The wind was up to 15 kts which didn’t help. We were fighting a losing battle and in danger of broaching. John and Max did a great job quickly dousing the kite after re-hoisting the genoa.

While we were faffing around with this, Upcycled sailed past us as well as Ruby with their gennaker half hoisted.

With Murray on helm we sailed the rest of the leg on a relaxing beam reach making good speed up to 7 kts at times. We crossed the finish line at 1500 hrs.