Our result last Wednesday was a thirteen place out of twenty one starters and I was happy with that result. There was really two races, one for the fleet that went for the freshening breeze on the north side of the harbour and one for the fleet that looked to avoid the tide on the south side. We beat the yachts on our side and the result was affected by the dying breeze. A dying breeze always favours the faster yachts in the division as they are home and dry before the breeze really dies. Yes I am happy that we beat Rainbow and Agrovation and Izzi and Trim across the line as these were the yachts we battled against on our side of the course.
Sunday’s West Harbour Winter Series was a similar experience only we added some extra elements of handicap. We did get a very good start and held our own to windward with the furling No 1 Genoa but we set the spinnaker from the lower halyard position when it could have gone from the masthead and when we dropped it we managed to get the rope on the furler wrapped around the base. What was surprising is that we lost not a lot of ground. With the new Passion X the lower halyard will be 350 mm higher than on Passion and the symmetric spinnaker will probable fly pretty well from the lower hoist.
Andrew Richardson from Lisdillon sent some nice photos of Passion taken at Port Stephens. The show the No 1 Genoa that we were using on Sunday and it is clear that the luff could be longer. There are also some good shots with the asymmetric spinnaker which looks strapped down a bit tight.
Passion at Port Stephens by Andrew Richardson
Is that spinnaker too tight?
Geoff on the helm at Port Stephens