It was a evening with a light wind forecast and perfect for trying the new No 1 genoa. It is a little longer on the foot than the carbon genoa off Passion so that it clears the shrouds a little better. With the longer foot comes a few extra square metres of sail area so we were hoping for an improved performance.
We started ok but for some reason the yacht below lifted to clear Onion Point and the ones above drove over the top. I suspect we were caught between two winds and once we fell into the dirty air from both sides it was good night. In Humbug we went a bit more mid stream to try to run over the top of the fleet and managed to pass a few but we were stuck in Jackpot’s dirty air and they seemed to like having us at their mercy. Much Ado V jumped away and was never caught by the fleet. Jackpot, Dump Truck and Joli worked away from us on the way to Goat Island and on the corner Lisdillon picked a nice shift by going hard into the island and tacking back along the shore. This is the second time they have made very large gains on us on the corner and it left us very mid fleet at the rounding.
Once on the way back to Cockatoo we reached below Lisdillon and poled out the new headsail on the way back down the Hunters Hill side of Cockatoo Island. All the crew were camped on the foredeck as we slowly reeled in the front runners. Lisdillon tried very hard to take our wind but the direction was over the port quarter and we ran by the lee for most of the leg with mostly clear air. While we were making ground on the front runners the tail of the fleet was catching us with fresh breeze from behind. Around the west end of Cockatoo we were again on Jackpot’s tail but they had enough of a lead to tack to starboard and get cleanly away for the reach to Humbug.
Dump Truck had been just ahead of Jackpot at the turn but she cleared out once on the wind. At the finish there was roughly a minute and a half gap between each of the first four yachts with Joli fast catching us once the wind was forward of the beam. Lisdillon was less than a minute behind and the tail end of the fleet came home well to take the top three handicap places.
I was disappointed to see we were third last on handicap and on looking at the results we had been given a harder handicap that the one from the previous weeks race. That is a bit of a mystery but we lost .028 on our handicap. If last weeks CHC of 1.012 was applied then we would have been 1 hour 4 minutes and 18 seconds on corrected time and just 4 seconds behind Lisdillon. Not only have we lost .028 on our handicap, the new CHC, is worse than the previous week after finishing in 8th place.
The new genoa poled out for the run to Cockatoo Island
The closest we got to Jackpot at the Cockatoo rounding