When it comes to round the buoys yacht racing we Laser sailors have a lot to learn. In the yacht we do mostly non spinnaker racing except for Sail Port Stephens and the West Harbour Winter Series. In Sail Port Stephens there are usually long legs so slow spinnaker setting is not a big handicap but the West Harbour Winter Series has a lot of short legs where sail handling proficiency pays big dividends.
Today was our first time with the 140 m2 symmetric kite in the spinnaker snuffer. Apart from watching a lot of videos I had not hoisted a snuffer before and both Elaine and I are delighted with how it worked. It went up and down as expected and there was no need to repack the kite after every hoist. On subsequent hoists it came out of the sock as it should and we even had it hoisted in the sock before the mark on the last lap.
Our lack of river yacht racing experience showed when we dropped the spinnaker at Clarke Point after the first run while the experienced racers carried theirs shy to Goat Island. It this stage of the race the Second Division leaders caught up the five minutes gap we had on them from the start times but fortunately only Pistol Dawn stayed ahead. We pulled away from the rest of the second fleet and were six minutes in front at the finish.
In the trip around Goat Island we made a break on the tail end of our fleet while the front end disappeared into the distance. It was quite demoralizing to see the lead boats far away in the distance and not see where they were making gains on our time.
We did get caught on the wrong side of a couple of shifts and did pick up a couple of good lifts but on balance I think we had to tack away from good lifts more often than not. The second windward work up the South side of Cockatoo Island was better than the first but the good guys were long gone and we have no idea how they fared on this passage. Next Light seen overtaking Passion X in the photo finished 15 minutes ahead.
It was an odd day as we finished in a puff of strong breeze while around the corner of Cockatoo Island we could see the tail end of the fleets drifting down the Parramatta River in glassy conditions.
The second trip around the south side of Cockatoo Island was much better than the first
Passion X with spinnaker dropped being overtaken by Next Light with spinnaker still flying. Phil Hare photo