Our windward work on Wednesday at the RANSA Winter series was about as good as it gets. We won the start at the pin which was the windward end and carried on as yacht tacked behind us. We were hoping to benefit from a right hand shift and were not the only ones thinking of that. The first movement favoured those who had tacked behind us and we gave up about three boat lengths on Aggrovation when we crossed again. Allegro looked good coming across from the northern shore but on the next move they carried on to the extreme south side of the course while we took their place on the north. This was a big win for us with a ten boat lengths gain on Aggrovation and a much larger catch up on Allegro. Our three nearest rivals on pointscore were close at hand with the biggest danger, Larrikin tucked away behind. The run back from the heads was a bit nerve racking as Aggrovation was right on our tail. They were still there around the turn mark in Rose Bay but on the run to Point Piper we all lost the breeze and the gaps widened out. Trim passed us here and on the beat to the finish line cleared out as they should. The lighter airs at the finish of the race spread the fleet out with the faster early finishers benefiting from the slow beat home of the rest. We were lucky to hold onto third place and even luckier that Aggrovation and Larrikin took longer to finish that they deserved. We finished well in front of the three Northshore 38s which are our benchmarks. We are currently giving them time and I suspect we will be giving them much more in the next race.
The RANSA fleet still finishing in the dying breeze.