After a pretty wild and windy week we managed to get out okay. The wind was strong and had that wintery feel today, the strongest by far this year. The strength averaged 22knots but was dense and felt a lot stronger, stronger than the 26 knots from a few weeks back. Still full main was the call due to an expected drop in wind pressure as the day went on. Time to test the no 4. This was quickly lowered again when we saw how small it was. More like a 5. No 3 back up just in time for the warning gun. Things happen so fast on the new boat and the day was not without incident. A good start, right on the gun and away until we had enough clearance from the fleet, we had planned to stay on starboard as the wind looked good from this side but after looking at the mark we realized that we were already easily on the layline and had to go over on to port in the clear. Trucked along in a squall that shifted 15 degrees then making the mark difficult to reach and we needed a couple of short ones to get around.
No 3 kite up and away. The plan was a quick gybe but the pole hadn’t locked in properly (still) and caused some distraction for a few minutes. At 16 knots things happen fast and before we knew it we were way past the downwind mark and heading for the harbor. Tactician remained calm and we got the heady and the kite down without incident but almost hard on again to get back into shore and covering a fair bit of ground. A couple of quick tacks then to E the shallow one. Fingers crossed but with 0.7m and some storm surge still about we were okay with the depth gauge dropping briefly to 3.6m at the mark. Phew past the shallow bit ……or so we thought.
Now back out to s mark almost hard on the breeze 2 miles. ¾ the way along the leg and crunch. We hit the bottom hard at about 6-7knots and it slowed us to 2-3 knots, a lot of force. According to the charts we should have had 4.1 meters plus 0.7m tide , plenty of water but touched again. Keel up to almost half and we were still touching at 4-5 knots. A sound no one was happy to hear especially naviguesser and of course the RO. Finally clear. Keel back down and off. Looks like the sand banks had moved during the bad weather.
Analysis of the data shows the depth dropped to 2.8 metres at the point of contact and for a long stretch!! This is with 0.7 metres of tide, so this means the sand was 2.1 AHD. Below is the area in question, and showing the tracks from previous races over this area. We have been over this with the kite up at 12-15 knots!! This is now an exclusion zone for us.
No obvious damage and no signs and any damage upon internal inspection but we need to send someone down below to check the keel and around the top of the keep support just to make sure.
Back to the top mark and around with the no3. Late hoist due to the distraction of running aground but off again and the call was for another gybe. Again slow gybe and sailed along way down wind but managed to get the kite down cleanly and over the line for the gun.
Phew what happened! It’s like a short sprint, don’t get time to think about anything until we are there.
We averaged 9 knots for the day and finished 2nd on IRC around 1.5 minute behind X factor. We lost a good couple of minutes when we ran aground and sailed a lot further at each kite drop so there is plenty of room for improvement. Fifth on YAH so hopefully this will improve our FSC handicap back to something realistic.
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