Tracks from a windy Wednesday with awful tacking angles on the way out off Onions Point
The weather patterns seem to have gone missing as we had one very mild regatta sailing Lasers in Adelaide. Not that I minded as the ribs are still healing from the fall down the companionway and I needed a rest from the boat building.
Our first sailing outing on return was the twilight at Greenwich Flying Squadron where for a third lucky week we scored a fastest time. It was lucky because we set the small No 3 genoa in anticipation of 20 knots of breeze and seemed to get a lot more. I don’t know for sure as we had the speed sensor out but the SOG went up to over 9 knots in one gust. The other lucky break was being too late at the start to put in a reef so we sailed full main through Humbug at a time when there was a lull in the breeze. Despite the awful tacking angles we emerged with a good lead and had overtaken the last of the bigger black fleet through Humbug. On the work to Cockatoo Island we put in the first reef and seemed to miss not one bit in the process to have out biggest lead of the night around Cockatoo. On the way to Goat Island we lost a bit of ground when a red fleet port tacker rounded up so we bore away to go below her only to have her bear away as well. There was no room to go back so we just had to bear away harder until they could stop. I think that was the end of the sloppy bits for the evening but by now Saoirse and Izzi were in sight. Fortunately for us they seemed to have a slow trip around Goat while we had a good rounding and hit our top speed of 9.3 knots approaching Long Nose. We left our reef in for the run back through Humbug as we had a good lead but it was a bit quiet for our passage and I suspect it was a bit windier for the following yachts.
We did not deserve to win on handicap and we did not but a third to Saoirse and Izzi was fair enough reward.