The title is a synopsis of today’s Winter Wedneday race at RANSA and despite the results everyone should be happy for a fresh breeze on a sunny day with a finish before the storm clouds arrived. Indeed at the finish the black clouds over North Sydney looked threatening so we stowed the sails as quickly as possible only to have big bright white cotton wool clouds appear from the South.
Fidelis won the reaching duel to the top mark followed by the Sydney 38 Agrovation or the First 40 Navy One or Amante. We had started on the boat with a better reaching angle but the wind shadow of the fleet was impenetrable. We ran away for clear air when we could and courtesy of ISuper going high we got a bit of clear air and pulled away from Philosopher and Joli. At the mark we were intent on establishing an inside overlap on Monkey Magic and not running up the backside of Meridian or Foreign Affairs. At the turn we were delighted to have pulled clear of ISuper, Philosopher and Joli who all had a share of our wind shadow. Overtaking lanes on the way back to Steele Point were very rare. We went up to get some clear air on Meridian and to stop Allegro running over the top and we did achieve both of these objectives. Despite the clear air Meridian rounded Steele Point ahead and only our tactic of holding out the genoa to windward and running deep into Rose Bay allowed us to reach back just clear ahead of Meridian.
On the work to Point Piper we had Meridian tucked away below and were chasing Foreign Affairs when our only mishap of the day happened. On the tack back to the Point Piper lay line we caught the genoa sheets around the end of the spinnaker pole and had to mark time until the tangle was untangled.
In the delay Meridian popped out ahead but fortunately the delay was not long enough for anyone else to overtake us.
Now we had to follow Foreign Affairs and Meridian around Shark Island. This time the trick of holding out the genoa to windward was not as effective so we turned for home half a minute behind Meridian.
The leg back to the finish line was tight but with a few lifts available most of the fleet did it on one board. Fidelis was an exception and we could see her tack back on port way past the lay line to the finish.
We pinched a lot on this leg thinking that the yachts in front knew something we did not know and were expecting a big header. A really big header did not come so we might have given away a few seconds but when we headed down to fast mode we saw over 8 knots to windward and a VMG of 5.1.
Despite this good speed Joli was gaining from behind and Meridian was pulling away a little.
At the finish we drew with Meridian on handicap and beat Joli by a few seconds.
The silver lining in the results was the different yachts that did well in the conditions. Amante did exceptionally well on fastest times and won on handicap from Fidelis, Navy One and Leeward.
Passion X was back in equal eighth with Meridian just 20 seconds behind Agrovation. Reve was a further eight seconds in front of Agrovation.
Depending on how much time we lost with the genoa sheets tangle around the spinnaker pole we might have been a few places further up the ladder but I am sure everyone had similar issues on the course.
Overall Monkey magic with their big drop for today are in the lead from Amante, Agrovation, Meridian and Passion X. No feasible result would have had us further up the ladder than one place so we are pleased with our day’s work.