After a couple of weeks of sailing into wind shadows we went wide on the corners and skirted the worst of the doldrums to claim third place on handicap just three seconds in front of Joli.
Joli also skirted the corner into Humbug by going on a great circle and all we had to do was go a bit wider, stay in the wind and get through Humbug as fast as we could to take advantage of our more generous handicap.
As generous as our handicap is it was not enough to overcome the elapsed time lead of between eleven to twelve minutes of Dump Truck and Much Ado V and they must be cock a hoop at beating the MC38 over the line.
We enjoyed the beat to Goat Island and did not lose too much time on the short work. With a reasonable reach to Long Nose we would have been among Joli and Meridian but a ferry on the corner came between us and cost us some distance. We did make up some time on the fleet on the run to Snapper Island but on the long work back they extended their lead and so it was quite a lonely beat back to Goat. By the time we reached the rounding mark at Goat the fleet was out of sight around the corner and the tail of Sweet Chariot and Fireball was quite some way off in the distance. To be precise Joli was 2 minutes 30 ahead at Goat and 2 minutes 40 seconds at the finish. Ausreo looked to be half a minute in front of Joli and but for breaking the line on the way to another handicap victory.
Ausreo who had broken the line was still sailing on and was a good guide to how we were performing on the beat to Goat but it did seem that the leaders all pulled away substantially on the beat. It was fitting then that they all fell into a hole off of Greenwich Point at the entry to Humbug and waited for us to catch up a little.
At the finish we were happy with our choice of sails for the evening, with our crew work and how we found our way around the course.
A new face on the course was the Xp38 Solveig II who slotted in in front off Meridian and Joli on a night where I imagine they enjoyed the conditions. Time will tell.
