West Coast Offshore Race 24/25 November 2017

This race, new on the Offshore calendar and promises to be a success... The starting format had the class's going off 3 hours apart.. with a progressing South Easter, the last start would benefit more with stronger winds.. nonetheless Yolo's start still had breeze in the early 20's.. starting with the kite up.. and a nice sail down to Robben Island sailing a good VMG... opting not to gybe in the shadow but rather to sail the VMG and break through it.. which we did.. and then had a quick sail down to Dassen passing in record time... winds were up just before and after the island touching in the early thirties.. still holding the kite.. eventually going to the small kite and then later back to the larger one... We over stood the gybe angle into the Bay and direct for Elands.. so soon after the Gybe, we realized that we could not hold the angle as it was tight and we were only sailing 2 up, so did not have the rail weight... so eventually dropped the kite and two sail reached in for Elands.. as we got closer the wind went a bit lighter... conditions were comfortable.. .Around the mark, hardened up for a few minutes and then tacked to beat out of the bay... there was around 13 knots if breeze at this time, going down... sailing into a slop which had the boat slamming into it from time to time... but making really good progress and quite an enjoyable beat.. taking turns to catch a short rest at dawn approached the wind started to lessen as forecasted.. but fortunately we were almost out of the bay, we worked the puffs and shifts and tacked our way out of the bay past Britannia

and Columbine and got a good lane for the heads, followed by a kite hoist to sail down the shipping channel and into Saldhana were we dropped the kite for the last half a mile as the angle went tight. IN all a great race, boat was great. Elapsed time of 26 Hours and Eleven minutes and won our class. Aboard were Ian and Dale