Wednesday evening was the slowest race of the year and the dying breeze produced some unique results. Every fastest time yacht also won their division on handicap. As the evening wore on and the prospect of finishing within the time limited dimmed more and more yachts called in on channel 73 and announced their retirement from the race. None of the black fleet could complete their course and the late night made for a smallish attendance at the BBQ and presentation.
We made a well timed start to leeward of the fleet but Agrovation higher on the start line reached across our bow to give us all their dirty air. This was particularly damaging against the incoming tide and we lost a lot of ground pinching to round Onion Point. Gwhizz showed the fleet a clean pair of heels but on the run through Humbug we poled out our big genoa and blanketed the fleet. This left us a bit high into the wind shadow and we saw Worlds Apart to leeward nose into the freshening breeze to make a handy break on Izzi and Agrovation.
On the work to Goat Island we were pinching into a big incoming tide immediately behind Izzi. I tacked away chancing a bit of tide against stronger breeze in the middle and in the process lost ground on Izzi and Agrovation. Izzi got away while there was breeze and left us to play with Agrovation for the rest of the race. In the end they went a bit too close to Greenwich Point and languished in the wind shadow. They were unlucky as the wind had swung south and the Greenwich shore was almost the windward shore but once into Humbug the breeze swung back reestablishing the wind shadow. We were never more than a few metres in front but with the incoming tide abating and with no wind the speed across the ground was down to .3 knots and a few metres takes a long time. For the last 200 metres to the line we hooked the boom up with the boom topping lift to get a bit of twist in the sail and that seemed to help us get home in the dark. We were 18 minutes behind Worlds Apart and Agrovation finished 15 minutes behind us which is quite a feat seeing we were in touch at the entry to Humbug.
Fourth fastest and fourth on handicap was a fair result from ten starters and a fair reward for the crews tireless efforts to get us to the finish line.
The lightest night of the year, so far.