SKE/LKE/JV/DV/JN
Course F MoA to #2 around twice
Wind was 7-10 gusting to 13 to start, later, 10-16 knots
We started with the jib, after rigging the #1 gennie then changing our minds.
Good start - long line and 5 boats, it was pretty easy.
We headed out on stbd. The wind wasn’t Picton Bay crazy. We played the shifts and worked our way up the course.
The crew work was awesome. Everyone knew what to do. We discussed next moves, and wham people did the necessary. It was a joy.
Our roundings were solid.
At the as we worked down the first downwind leg the wind got softer, so we changed to the #1 gennie. It was set up, under pressure, perfectly.
Half way up the second beat we had a more breeze again and perhaps the gennie wasn’t the right call - it was marginal.
We did fine, again tacking on the wind shifts. Sailing our own race.
Back down the track we high 7.9 knots of speed over the ground and better than that through the water.
We had a few issues, getting the jib fully hoisted before the rounding didn’t happen. There was another foot that needed to come in. I have to call for the gennie up leaving more time to get it sorted out and fully set before the rounding.
The Non-Flying Sails NFS start 5 minutes before us. Eventhough Rebel crossed the line first, because they were in NFS, they got a 5 minute head start on us. The took 1:52:35 to complete the course and we took 1:50:44. So we did get line honours. Granted they were white sail and we were spinnnaker. Correcting for that with PHRF, they corrected to 2:10:02 and we corrected to 2:03:07. So good for us.
Corrected we beat the GC21 by 2m:42s. A solid lead. BUT they not only dropped their spinnaker in the water, they wrapped it around their keel. Laning said it cost them 10 minutes. I think, looking back on the issue they had, think it cost them maybe 4-5 minutes. Would we have beat them without the kite problem? Perhaps not.
Anyway the sail was lovely, working with the crew was lovely. All in all a terrific evening on the water, thank you team.
S