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Highlights:
Our beats are cool. They rock.
Downers:
Our downwind legs suck
Result:
2nd on Club Handicap. 1st on IRC. We'' I'm blowed. Not used to finishing hours ahead on the water and actually placing!
Lessons Learnt:
Fat chicks are highly advantagious on the rail. Slimmer ones like Yasmin are less efficient. But they make up for it by keeping the crew slightly focused.
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Winter Series Race 6. Friday 31 March
Wind 8-12 knots, North Westerly, gusting to 25 knots under clouds!
Here we go again: Another race report. Another briefing, complete with whiteboard (I'll have to stop writing about this soon, as everyone is starting to think it's normal), and another staggered start. This time we're off at 11:00. Our course is up to East Bouy from the usual start transit of West Pole / Pumphouse.
This time our start really is quite good, even though I say that every time! Approaching from port we sail through, or under, other boats coming to the line on starboard and as they sail down the line losing valuable ground to kill time, we remain on port, tacking over onto starboard seconds before the start time and only seconds away from the transit. Late. But only by about 3 seconds. Upwind, with the 'weather guage' as they used to say in Jack Aubrey's day
Gaining speed on starboard we gain upwind over 'Rapscallion' and 'Touch and Go'; tack onto port to the lay line for East Bouy and head up to it, only to find that dratted 'Blue Chip' ahead of us at the first mark. We don't even have overlap so we have to gybe around in second place. Not a good look.
We reach out to clear the reef, heading into the lead rather late, and set the bitch for the run to Earth Station and, as usual, find the wind dead astern - our poorest downwind angle. So that means reaching, gybing, sailing hundreds of extra miles just to maintain boatspeed. Rapscallion is bloody fast downwind - in a straight line to the mark, and when we finally close, we find that we havn't increased our distance at all - this despite screaming surfing and go-fast bravado on broad reaches. Plus we managed not to stuff up any gybes. No mean feat (though we do have a little, half-hearted broach along the way).
We hit something just short of the downwind mark, and Neil tells me so, but I'm preoccupied with the imminent take-down. Completing that, we start our reach without mishap and set the sails, tweak, trim, fiddle and fret. While 'Rapscallion' sails straight past us from nowhere....
Dear readers, I have to confess at this point to uttering a few oaths. Juicy ones. Expletively. The crew look slightly concerned (which means they're worried too) as this cannot possibly be happening.... But it is, so we round Shoal Spar mark to head back on a beat behind the Rapper by quite a bit. More than just seconds.
There's nothing else for it so we back the sails and I stop, head to wind, scrubbing at least two minutes off / onto our time, drifting backwards to try to get the weed off. When we come back around to a point of sail, we find that our speed has gained dramatically. That means that Hamish is right. Peering over the side he's already told us that we're towing a forest from our keel. Bloody weed. When the hell is it going to rot and disappear from our race-course?
But disadvantage creates determination, and thanks to incredible helmanship, (oh alright, quite good crewing as well) we arrive at the top mark a bit ahead of 'Rapscallion' again (to our huge relief). It's a constant team belief that the Rapper's being sailed rather too well at the moment.... and we turn, head downwind, determined to try to stretch our lead, flying the bitch bravely yet again, sailing angles yet again, and find that our lead hasn't, just for a change, been narrowed too much. Around Shoal Spar we gybe and try to hang on to the spinnaker for a rather tight reach across to Earth Station, but can't get a decent angle (spinnaker in the water, not enough weight on the rail and sailing about 30 degrees down from the mark), so down her and reach under jib instead, drawing surprisingly away all the time.
Around this and we're onto the 'home straight' with just a beat up to the transit of West Pole / Pumphouse to finish. I don't want to go on about this too much, but the upwind helming is really quite good. We arrive at the finish after a couple of tacks well ahead on the water.
Yeah, that means nothing, we think. But we later find we've come first on IRC. A pleasant surprise. Only second on Club Handicap, but then let's face it, on Club, we're clobbered from the start.
And where was Bob? Oh well, there's a tale. Having renaged on sailing for bloody months due to his thesis, and to the re-writing of his thesis, we find he's gone off on holiday to Bankok - a holiday which he won because he came out sailing on Jackal at the Regatta last year. Typical. So we had our 'race-chick', Yasmin with us today. The advantages of this are that she is: 1) - a race chick and thus good for our image; 2) - she keeps the rest of the crew focused and manly, 3) - she's a good sport. But the disadvantages are 1) - She doesn't weigh 120 kgs hiking out; 2) - she, like many women afloat, constantly wants to know where the head is on Jackal...
We don't have one. Period. There are no creature comforts on our boat. She's hard, stubborn, far too highly responsive (which means you actually have to keep trimming all her various trimming bits) and has an utterly horrible handicap, which means that even though we sail her to, or above, her handicap, we still come fourth. Virtually every time.
Except today. But that's unusual. Although quite frankly we've learnt to like fourth.
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