Today was almost a repeat of last Wednesday only a little lighter but just as sunny and pleasant on the water.
We started towards the pin this week with just Trim below us and were able to climb above her for the first part of the beat. Once we were headed the backwind from Trim started to affect our performance so we tacked to port to cover the fleet. Looking back Trim had now fallen into our dirty air and we had a clear lane ahead.
Joli tacked early to port and when they came back on starboard we had to take their transom. After a few minutes they tacked to come with us to the south side of the harbour. The line that Joli took carried them above the island while we had to tack away from a lift. Then on the next shift to the right Joli was inside the whole fleet and steaming away. We also lifted but were crossing tacks with the Flying Tiger and just rounded the top mark inside Hitchhike.
On the poled out square run back to Steel point we held our position and made up a little ground on Joli but they managed the reach into Rose Bay particularly well while we had interference from the Div 1S fleet which took the wind out of our sails literally and figuratively. The Flying Tiger passed us just at the Point Piper mark. From then we were in her dirty air and so lost a little ground on the beat around the Island.
A light patch on the way home did not help our position and we could see Allegro in breeze behind making up ground. Hanni slipped past on the long square run so that we finished fourth fastest on the day.
Some very good tacking angles against a small incoming tide.
The good points were that we played the backstay well but the wind was a little too light and we needed the higher tension for very short periods. We started well and but for the forced tack away from the Shark Island on the first work seemed to pick the breeze well. The tack away from the lift can be seen on the tracks below. We ran well in the slightly fresher breeze at the top of the course but not so well in the dying breeze approaching the finish.
This was the first time we have beaten Allegro and Amante and that put a smile on the faces of the crew.
Joli sailed very well and used their strong windward performance to establish a good lead over the fleet. On ORCi they would have given us a beating however on ORCi the Flying Tiger has to give us time and I estimate we would have beaten them be a minute. We were around 10 minutes faster than the we would have been in the old Passion judging from the performance of our competitors from two years age.
Now all this better performance did not translate into handicap results where we finished with the same 10 points as last week. Thank to the tiny increase in handicap from last week we managed to take 10 place by one second from Izzi.
Whatever the handicap result it is great for the crew to be somewhere near the front of the fleet and finishing 25 minutes earlier than last year.