Crew: Geoff, John, Jamie, Eduardo, Murray.
Forecast: Predictwind was forecasting W 4 knots increasing to SE 11 knots in the afternoon. Metservice, a a bit more extreme, was saying 20 kts gusting 30 kts.
Hoping for the best, we rigged up the #1 heavy genoa. We sailed round to Evans Bay tying up at the poles next to the slipway. A very light easterly. Go figure!
The course was announced as: Start – Falcon Shoal (p) – Finish. The EBYMBC race was extended to the Port Nick keelboats as they didn’t have a race on that day. The EB trailer yachts also joined us. We counted 17 boats milling around the start line waiting for the wind.
The race was delayed until the breeze finally arrived and we kicked off at 1320 hrs in a nice 8 kts of southerly. We crossed the line at the pin end and bowman John quickly had our maxi spinnaker hoisted. A good start.
The boats behind us put on a colourful display and John got out his camera. Arabesque had their spinnaker upside down which surprisingly seemed to work quite well. Tamerlane were trying out their nice new yellow and orange kite.
As we neared Pt Halswell we hoisted the genoa and dropped our kite. Grenadier managed to sneak in beside us as the wind died out to 2 kts in the shadow of Kau Bay. After a bit of toing and froing we managed to get ahead of Grenadier as the wind gradually increased.
With 12 kts on the nose we set our course straight to the Falcon Shoal lighthouse.
After gybing around Falcon Shoal at 1405 hrs we were now on a beam reach back to Pt Halswell. After waiting to check the wind angle we decided to hoist our medium spinnaker. It didn’t set properly the first time so we dropped it and tried again. Good work John.
As we entered the Kau Bay wind shadow again we dropped the kite and coasted though the calm with just the genoa. We cheekily cut inside White Cavalier to George’s shouts of “cheats!“.
We were soon enjoying 15 kts of wind for the beat up Evans Bay. The wind was at the top end of the range for our genoa but it was pulling well with Jamie and Eduardo maintaining good trim. Murray was keeping an eye on Grenadier behind us and we covered them as they tacked.
After three more tacks we crossed the finish line at 1456 hrs beating Grenadier and White Cavalier by about two minutes.
On the way back to Chaffers we had a slight incident. The Ronstan winch handle got pulled out of its holder and popped overboard into the water. We looked back and there it was – floating! We circled back and picked it up with the fish net. Good MOB practice.
We docked Halo at Chaffers at 1540 hrs and went back to the club. Rowdy announced the preliminary results for just the EB keelboats. Halo came 3rd on handicap.
RaceQs Replay: http://raceQs.com/event/1790001
Total 16 Nautical Miles
On Monday the full results for the combined fleet were published. Well done White Cav!
Halo Log Book 