The nicest thing about the Friday Afternoon pursuit series run out of Balmain is the spirit in which racing is conducted from the honour system for starting to the leeway given in awkward situations. We sail very short handed for a yacht of our size so we are not the quickest to respond and today even with extra crew the strong wind called for a lot of caution. Thank you to the sailors who gave us some slack and did not drive us into Cockatoo Island off the start line. Thank you to Tana for not putting us about into the moored yachts we had just tacked away from along the Balmain shore.
On the careful front we went out with a double reef in the main and the No3 jib thinking that with the small crew today would be a good time to see how we went with such aggressive reefing. It was a good test as to windward we were competitive with the single reefed sailors while downwind we suffered as would be expected. A gun crew might have taken one reef out on the runs and put it back in for works but we were making a little ground and our 7th place out of 17 starters was a satisfactory result. Maximum boat speed was 9.4 knots according to the same instruments that recorded 12.4 knots on Wednesday with more wind and a single reef.
By a small margin over Odyssey and Van Demon we were fastest around the course but that might be a bit generous as Irukandji parked next to the “No Loitering” sign off of Spectacle Island and while they did not incur the nominated fine they did suffer a bit of embarrassment. At times we made up a little ground on them but when they parked they probably had us by a small margin on fastest time.
Another windy day this time beating towards Darling Harbour