A tiny crew of Ron, Elaine and I raced Passion in the second West Harbour Winter series race with remarkable success. As we were down on crew numbers I arrived at Passion early to set up all the gear. Ron joined us at noon at the GFS pontoon and Elaine joined us at 12:30 at Woolwich where we were pulled up on our mooring waiting for the start. As we can see the start line from the mooring it is a relaxed way to prepare and hoist the sails before motoring to the start line.
Just in time enough breeze sprang up for us to turn off the motor and circle for the start. We took a few transoms as we started on Port but the starboard tack was away from the mark so we were soon into the lead. The lead looked even better when a big progressive header developed but I hung on for the lay line only to have the wind shift back as we tacked taking us back to the middle of the fleet. A zoomed in section of the tracks from the chartplotter shows how extreme were the wind shifts.
A big progressive header on the first work and a big progressive lift on the next
On the reach from Manns Point to Goat Island we carried breeze down on the fleet and rounded well up for the reach and run back to Balmain.
We were pleasantly surprised that we were still mid fleet as the wind was not enough to set spinnakers well and when it was it shifted around a lot making the spinnakers less effective. Once the wind picked up the lightweight flyers took off. The work back along the Birchgrove shore was always going to be difficult with such a small crew but Ron left the mainsail to look after itself and with Elaine skirted, tailed and winched away all day to good effect. We did try to stay out of the hurley burley by going closer to Cockatoo than the rest but that cost us as we languished in the wind shadow while Aggrovation and Macscap our jeanneau cruiser rivals took off. Once clear of the wind shadow I took the Long Nose side and we were gifted with this progressive lift that took us all the way to the mark, inside Macscap and right on Aggrovation’s tail. That is the second set of tracks on the chartplotter. Most of the spinnaker carrying yachts made ground on us on the next broad reach but we did hold off Mascap because the reach tightened towards the end which meant we had to harden up but she had to drop the spinnaker and hoist the genoa.
By the work along Spectacle and Spinnaker Ron had the tacking well sorted out and we used the full width of the track from moored yachts to shallow shores to good effect.
Using all the available width on the work along the islands
The chartplotter tracks from this section of the race show how we took transoms but made it up on the next tack. We took the work carefully but did well and were very happy with our work. Aggrovation had pulled away on the previous reach and was in different wind now so she was no use as a benchmark but Macscap was still behind. We could see her and the smaller Jeanneau Sunfast 32 Tana battling along the Hunters Hill shore for bragging rights and for a while they appeared to be catching us. At Clarke Point our breeze picked up and we skipped away. We were still carrying our private breeze as we rounded for the reach to the western corner of Cockatoo Island and this was our highest speed leg of the day. By now everyone was enjoying our breeze as we tight reached to the finish line of the shortened course at Balmain.
Well satisfied to have beaten the Sun Fast 37 Macscap we followed the original course around the islands and back to the mooring. Ron helmed her home to complete a day where he did every conceivable task on board including holding our the genoa to windward on the square run. Elaine did a great job skirting, tailing calling the genoa trim and we declared the day a success. We were not expecting any great handicap result so I was very pleased to see we had won on handicap on a day we had not set the spinnaker.