In the last Wednesday twilight we made good use of the wind shifts on the work to Goat Island up to the last one. The tracks from the chart plotter show good angles and even the angle on starboard going up the Balls head shore look good so what went wrong?
Half way along the tack the fleet was deep against the Goat Island shore in light air and pointing at our stern. Despite our good angle relative to the earlier shifts we should have tacked to cover. Not only would that have protected our gains it would have put us on starboard approaching the mark.
Having missed the opportunity of clear air to tack the next massive lift brought the fleet up and to windward. Back on port trying to make the island we had to take the stern of Utopia losing valuable windward metres and forcing us to pinch to round the island now that we were in a massive header.
The tacking angles show the extreme shift in wind direction and is a good reminder to take what you can when you can.
Caught on the wrong side of a big shift at Goat Island and paying a high price for not covering the fleet.