I am still recovering from the effort on Monday and Tuesday to get the yacht sanded and primed. On Wednesday morning I completed the first coat of primer on the transom and used up the rest of the mix for a second coat around the cockpit seats. As I dashed out of the door to drive to the Winter Wednesday sailing I took a photo of the painted transom from under the tarpaulin so it does not show a lot of the boat but it is good for the record.
Winter Wednesday racing was a challenge as I needed to rest but we needed another good result to wrap up the pointscore. The big black genoa was still soaking wet from last week so I was tempted to use it despite the forecast for seventeen knots. The crew had been reading other forecasts and were sure it would be OK and as we were going for broke I fell to the temptation. The weather had its own plans and soon it was honking in with regular plus 20 knot gusts so even before the start we reefed the main and pulled the backstay down hard to bend the mast and flatten the main.
It was an odd wind direction being from the North and predicted to swing via the North East so we tight reached up the the heads and broad reached back to Steele Point. As the breeze lightened on the reach we shook out the reef and poled out the genoa for a dead square run into Rose Bay. Our start had been well timed and we were at the windward end of the line. From the start we climbed high for clear air and were rewarded by passing Larrikin our nearest pointscore rival. Izzi started lower but had good speed and a clear air patch so she beat us to the heads and all the way home.
As we rounded the mark in Rose Bay to come onto the wind the wind strengthened all over the course so we put in the reef again giving the crew a very good workout.
By the finish line we were pretty pleased with our effort as we had beaten Larrikin off the stick and looked line ball with Aggrovation who had been strongly recovering from a blanketed start all day.
We were even more pleased when the results came out and we had scored 6th place just 7 seconds in front of Aggrovation who tied with two others.
Larrikin and Allegro were further back on handicap so we have wrapped up the series with three races still to go. It is just as well as we have exhausted our bag of tricks and probably our unfair share of good luck over the series. The handicapper has now doled out consolation prizes to our competitors in way of better handicaps so any good result from now will be magic.
To top off the week Kevin gave me a hand on Thursday to drill a whole lot of holes in Passion X for the engine ventilation, the water and fuel tank inlets, the VHF cable run for the stern mounted AIS antenna and the manual bilge pump. Some jobs are more than twice as fast with two working on them and I appreciate the support with the decisions on where we are going to mount gear.
Awful rain today restricted work to shopping and sanding the hatches in the garage but I did get to book a launch time slot in the second week in November, contact the carrier about the trip to the water, did accept a quote for all the cushions and mattresses and did deliver plans for the pushpits and pulpit. I am hoping for the weather to clear so I can get on with spot patching and the second coat of primer.
The first coat of primer on Passion X before the rain came.