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This year the southern course south of Mud Island
was run in the place of the longer Great Bay Race but took the same
format of "Tactical Triangles" which once again taxed the
brain’s trusts on each vessel. Maybe we should have sent the winning
crew to Valencia? - because Alinghi’s team got it horribly wrong
twice – easy to pick from a TV camera overview I know!
6 boats fronted the starter’s gun (a squeaky hooter) and all got away
to a fair start at the Aquatic Paradise entrance leads.
Hot Property appeared to establish an early lead, hotly pursued
by Intrigue, Akimbo and Grey Matter as an invited visitor. Iris
of Bergin was next up with Kestrel starting 11 minutes behind
after handling the start signals brilliantly! No Spook this
year, due to yours truly’s recent health issues but I had the pleasure
of sailing on the perfect boat for the day – Kestrel was well
suited to the couple of square runs we managed to organise and the shade
under the bridgedeck canopy is delightful!
The tacticians amongst us started the day’s proceedings with our first
good decision – no, opening the fridge was a little further down the
track! - the smart money was on an anticlockwise rounding of Peel and
this we chose, passing Iris shortly after south west rocks on
Peel. We then passed the next two boats – Intrigue and Grey
Matter heading in the other direction – and this cost them dearly.
12 months ago clockwise was a good call but not this year - sorry
fellas.
We closed on Hot Property as they returned to reround the Naval
Reserve beacon – I understand that listening to the navigator’s
advice was a mistake made on Alinghi too!
Kestrel then ran around the southern triangle (Hope, Cleveland,
Huybers) clockwise while the only one we saw following our lead was Grey
Matter but we weren’t too sure which way she went as they rounded
Hope a long way behind us. As far as we could tell all others went
north first – lucky us, as the breeze veered during the day we ended
up with a great northern triangle too, going clockwise and scoring a
reach, beat and another square run. We rounded Hope ahead of Intrigue
and not so far behind the leaders – enough for an easy performance
handicap win anyway.
Intrigue passed us on the reach back to the finish with many
yeehahs to be heard. We of course tried to return the favour but
the fridge door kept swinging open in the slop and we obviously had to
attend to that first! Akimbo was first home followed by Hot
Property who suffered a broken main halyard. Grey Matter
was next over followed by Intrigue, Kestrel and Iris.
It was a lovely race - ( I guess the view from the winners dais
makes that an expected comment! ) and the skeds were excellent – well
done and thanks to everybody. Breeze was a typical afternoon bay breeze
rising to 20 knots at the finish.
The website has track info – great little devices (Hot Property was
masquerading as Catalina, Kestrel was her lovely self)
Thought for the future - this race or the GBR if/when it runs it would
be great to get a tracker on all boats and/or radio in at each major
mark. That’s what we do on the Night Race series which I believe
has a lot of benefits, it is not onerous and adds a lot of
interest.
Kestrel clearly chose the right course and direction and recorded
a big winning margin on PHF ; Akimbo was streets ahead on OMR –
Hot Property’s rerounding and a broken main halyard obviously cost
her dearly.
Cheers all – hope to see you back on the water before too long.
Tony Eppell
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