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Combined Clubs Weekend Event October 25/26
The combined clubs weekend race/ cruise to Coochie started in beautiful light north easterly breezes. Heading from the start to Lockyer saw Spook and Akimbo neck and neck. Eventually the big mono Eleven managed to get over the top of Spook after a long dogfight and slowed her significantly with Akimbo then getting away towards Hanlon. Spook then raised her big screecher as the breeze backed marginally and overtook Akimbo. Akimbo came back again, going up higher to search for fresher breezes which she got. After Hanlon, spinnakers went up for the light weather gybing duel with lightning off a storm cell over Stradbroke making for an eerie scene. Another storm cell formed up over Victoria Point, Akimbo just got to the Banana Banks in time, retrieved their kite and had a great close reach to the finish off the bottom of
Coochie.
Spook all but caught Akimbo at the top of the Banana banks but got hit by rising winds between the cells and had to bear away to get her kite down. This put her in a bad position over the shallows and caught between the cells. When the wind hit 30 knots and showed signs of more she dropped her main as the water depth was in the 2m range and she had far too much speed for safety. This allowed Akimbo to pull out a comfortable lead over Spook at the finish but behind the mono, Eleven.
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| All was down to the late finishing Beats Workin though who without a spinnaker or a screecher and two up took the honours in OMR and Performance.
Overnight the race fleet of Akimbo, Spook, Jag, Beats Workin and Wavelength were joined by the cruisers. Kestrel had taken a leisurely sail down to arrive before the storm arrived and Purrfect got lost just after leaving the leads and ended up at
Tangalooma! Smart move though to be well away from the evil looking storms!
There were several retirements amongst the mono fleet and one sports boat was decidedly horizontal until managing to retrieve their sails.
A very sociable night was spent at Coochie with some barbecuing on the beach and lots of boat hopping! A real coincidence was when we found that Jim Fern's new boat Jag, rafted up alongside us, was actually built by one of the Spook crew a few years back - tears were shed!
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Bob Forster's Wavelength looks great close up and the appointments on Beats Working are par excellence.
Sunday dawned beautifully and Lyle, sailing on Jag with Jim Fern took a long swim to shore and back again - Wolfy on Kestrel could be seen shaking his head and mumbling about sharks the whole time!
The start on Sunday was tricky with a big tide run at the bottom of Coochie causing some of the monos to be over early. A new battle emerged between Spook and Eleven for overall line honours as the fleet raced up via Cleveland Yellow. At the mark, Eleven and Spook were neck and neck with Spook under her big screecher and Eleven Struggling to hold the kite up. Just after the mark Eleven now under heads'l just had to watch as Spook squeezed up under screecher going faster and higher and led by a large margin at the top end of Green Island. Lots of discussion ensued between race control and Spook as the race control team on Endurance just couldn't match her pace! |
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It was resolved that Spook would take her own time at the finish and take following boats' times for as long as necessary. RQ then scrambled Destiny from the harbour and just managed to make the finish line in time for Spook's arrival. They were a little lucky as Spook was slowed by three incidents: a spinnaker wineglass (almost a forgotten mono experience!) and a left over problem from the difficult retrieval in the previous day's storm front; this was compounded when one of the spinnaker sheets decided to detach itself; and there was a huge bang when what appeared to be a very large esky lid hit the starbr'd rudder and wrapped itself around it - the slowing effect was dramatic! In the end Spook did manage to keep the multis on top finishing several minutes ahead of Eleven and the horizontal sports boat recovered from the previous day. Wavelength looked to be the next tri home ahead of Jag.
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Altogether a beautiful and exciting weekend of sailing and some great company down the bottom end of the bay as part of the overnight raft ups. The combined clubs organizers excelled in their race organization, course setting and in just getting so many boats racing together in our beautiful bay.
Tony Eppell
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