In response to a fairly large increase in handicap I opted to remove all the surplus sails from Passion X before the Winter Wednesday race at RANSA.
If you ask me “How did that go?” I would have to reply “Not so good.”
I had observed a characteristic of sailing Passion X that she seems to like to have her bow down and her flat, fat stern out of the water in light air but I have yet to work out what is the transition wind strength.
Today we started well in nine knots but dropped off the pace at one stage when the breeze died. That had repercussions as we dropped back into dirty air and never recovered. At the top mark we were a couple of minutes behind our usual pacemakers but not too damaged so we went of in chase of Allegro, Amante, Crosshaven, Monkey Magic, Leeward and Meridian with our genoa poled out. By Steele Point we were right on Allegro’s stern but had Philosopher and all the above mentioned yachts outside. For a brief moment we pulled level and even got ahead but on the approach to Rose Bay Philosopher got her bow inside our stern and Leeward inside Philosopher. We had to go so wide that by the time we had room to gybe Allegro, Crosshaven, Meridian and Amante were well gone and we were in the dirty air of Leeward and Philosopher. We reached away from Philosopher only to have her steam up at the Point Piper mark and get another inside overlap.
The reach home was no less painful as we were in the slipstream of Leeward and Philosopher and despite going low for clear air could not break the cover and Monkey Magic also held us out to the finish.
Apart from Joli and Agrovation, Britannia had a good day beating us on scratch and pulling off second on handicap while Amante also suffering from the handicappers wrath from last week just managed to finish in front of Passion X so we both had a drop.
What made the day even more disappointing was the time gap to Agrovation and Joli who had charmed results. With a 2, 1, 3 out of the last four races Agrovation must be in the handicappers frame for next week.
Fidelis must have been disappointed that the promised reach to the top mark turned into a hard beat and Crackerjack must be wondering where all the winter fresh breezes in which she revels went.
So now all the gear in back on board stuffed under the V berth where it keeps the bow down and I will not be trying that again for a while.