It was great to see the big Ausreo out on Wednesday night even if they did disappoint us by powering past on the final work to the finish. Weather wise it was the best of the season and that no doubt brought out the big Beneteau and hopefully they will keep up the appearances.
We were down on crew numbers for the night and that meant we were not the quickest tackers in the fleet so our handicap results suffered. Another minute and we would have been mid fleet so it was not a disaster and everyone gets a turn with the handicap system.
On fastest times we were a long way behind Jackpot who took off out of Humbug and was never troubled. Fully powered up she is a fast ship and quite a contrast to the reefed mainsail result from last week.
Joli had another good race and seemed to like the conditions but even given she sailed well the gap back to Passion X was excessive. From the results it was clear that the earlier starting fleets had relatively better times around the course than the later ones and the slower of the later ones seemed to have been left out on the course.
We did not do well on the run back from Goat Island and could see the slower yachts from behind rapidly closing the gap with freshing breeze and the bigger Blue fleet yachts did blanket us for much of the run. It was not until we turned the corner at Cockatoo for the work home that we got clear air and streatched out from the Blue Fleet.
It was at this stage that Ausreo went through our lee like we were standing still and perhaps we were. Perhaps we were staying too close to Cockatoo to avoid the Blue fleet running over the top and while we did that Ausreo left us in their wake.
On the boat building front I moved from the bow to the stern and added the final layer of 12 mm ply to the rear edge of the boarding platform. This forms a formidable box section comprising two layers of 12 mm ply on the two faces and a layer on the top and bottom edge all stiffened with webs and stringers. While the bow is massive with four layers of 32 mm meranti on top of 36 mm of ply the stern is equally strong.
These last two jobs left me with a seriously sore shoulder and an inclination for lighter duties which included fitting the external keel shoe, doing the external glass on one of the ply joins, cutting the hole for the stern tube and locating the P bracket. These were all tasks requiring more care and attention to detail than the robust planing of the bow and are jobs that are due to be done.
Today I attempted to manufacture the stern tube out of epoxy glass. While I say attempted I mean it is made but it is stuck with less than half off the mandrel. Tomorrow I will jury rig the 2 tonne chain block to see if they can be parted of if I have to start again when fresh supplies of fibreglass arrive.