Wednesday Night Race 12 October 2016

Wednesday 12/102016 was our first Wednesday evening race for the 2017 season. On board for the race was Ian, on helm, Cath in the cockpit and foredeck, Sieger on Halyards, and we had two foreign guests, Roddy and Sharon, from the UK. Dale sent his apologies as he was unavailable and Shane on Regardless as he will be doing the Cape to Rio Race aboard Regardless, so he needs to start partaking in all the Regardless events to get fully upto speed with the Rio crew. The race conditions on the day – Southerly wind in the 8 to 21 knot range, flat water mostly, with a bit of wind chop. The wind was quite shifty at times on the second beat, form the Laid mark back to the Harken mark. We started the race at 18H00, with the Club Class 1 non spinnaker fleet, 5 minutes behind the IRC class, Class 1 & 2 spinnaker fleets(Yolo sailing Class 2, non spinnaker). Approaching the line on port, below the rest of the fleet, we tack on to starboard at the gun, to get a clean start. However it was not long before we were overhauled by the Fast 42, of Richard Stubbs. And so ended up picking our way through some dirty air, up the first beat as the bigger class one boats slowly sailed over us, one by one. None the less, we managed to round the Paarden Island mark, first in our class, hot on the tail of the Class 1 boats. A little further back was Regardless in second position. We tried to keep her there, but eventually we were passed by the faster Simonis 35, on the way down to Milnerton. We managed to get the J2 out on the pole, after some coaching from the back of the boat, and some effort from the front end. This allowed us to stay in striking distance of Regardless, who rounded Milnerton and the offset laid mark, around 100m ahead of us. We had two good roundings, considering the manoeuvres required by our small crew. The beat back to Harken was in a very shifty 21 knot Southerly breeze. But we managed to keep up the boat speed with good trimming by Cath on the main traveller. Regardless crossed ahead of us, by a few boat lengths, about a third of the way up the beat, as he headed inshore. We decided to continue on towards the mountain on port tack, weaving our way through the shifting breeze until we were just short of the lay line. Taking inshore on starboard, we crossed ahead of Regardless by around 10 boat lengths. We also passed the Fast 42, Skitzo, the Simonis 35, Scattering ( Spin. Class 2 ). The reach back to the finish was a smooth ride, as we kept Skitzo and Regardless, at bay, to finish 45 seconds ahead of William. 2.06minutes on corrected time. Not bad for our very depleted crew and two guests, against the full Regardless Rio crew.