When we looked out our window this morning there was a nice breeze off Catseye beach, so we headed around to the marina hopeful of a good days sailing.
By the time we were due to start (11 am), the wind was weakening, but the committee continued with their plan and started our race. We found ourselves with no wind and a strong favourable current running up the Dent Passage. Some boats were travelling sideways, whilst a few got out of the channel and seemed to be getting a bit of wind. The start of the next race ( Cruising division 2) was postponed, and when it was clear the boats in our race were going nowhere, the race was abandoned for a restart, waiting for a SE change came through. We were happy the race had been called off because we had a poor start, as did a number of the bigger boats. It was a potentially dangerous situation as the current was sweeping boats towards a reef at the Northern end of the passage.
We restarted at 12.15 pm in a light SE breeze, but at least we had a breeze and a revised course, similar to yesterday. This time we had a good start, and were not far away from our main rivals, Condor, Hammer, Whitebirds (previously Bobsled) and Eureka 11. The spinnaker was up as soon as we cleared the Dent Passage, and held our ground with the above boats and started to pull away from the fleet. A Dehler 41 "Solutions" had a great start and took a bit of running down, but we passed him before the first mark.
We quickly left the bulk of the field behind
Whitebirds is making a cracking pace
Solutions is ahead of us after the start
And soon after, they were behind us
After the spinnaker leg, (rounding white rock) we were back on the wind all of the way home, around Denman Island and back to the finish line in the Dent Passage, opposite the yacht club.
We continued to do battle with the big boats listed above, and no-one else was anywhere near us through the return leg as they got left further behind.
As we came into Dent Passage we saw a boat that had run aground on the reef at the Northern end of the passage. As mentioned earlier, it was a real risk in the starts where there was little wind and strong currents.
We finished at 3.04 pm just behind the bigger boats, and had to find somewhere to park for a few hours as it was close to low tide and there was insufficient depth for any of us to get in the marina.
Hamilton Island Yacht Club from the finish line
Sailing condition today were very pleasant with 9-14 knot winds and very little swell. We only had 1 whale sighting.
We ended up coming 4th on handicap (which is ever increasing), and now lead the Cruising Division 1 after 3 races.
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