A wonderful day on the water. Good breeze for a change. Clear skies but a bitterly cool breeze. Wooley hats and thermals were the common amongst the crew. Wind averaged 12-14 knots instead of the 40+knots or <2knots.
A brief hiccup before the race when Tactician bugs showed off his new gadget only to realise he had forgotten the batteries and USB cable. Never mind we would just have to use the tablet and PC to work out were we were going.
The approach to the start was good with the gismos telling us that we were smack on for the start, one problem , other boats in the way. The longboat were between us and the line and we had to get around them somehow. We had to jam ourselves up for maximum height to climb over them and this killed boat speed but enabled us to get over the line and then tack early to get into clear breeze. We opted to stay out on port tack where the breeze looked stronger, unfortunately it was lifting inshore on the other tack and we were third around the top mark behind occy pot (OP) and Knee Deep.
Kite up and the tactical duel commenced. It was a great race with us and OP going head to head and within 20 feet at times around the course. Sometimes they were higher and faster , sometimes we were higher and faster. It was like match racing lasers around the course and Knee Deep were always there waiting to pounce on any error but had a poor kite selection costing them dearly until they peeled to a bigger one. Close racing. On the beats cross tacks to see who made gains. At one stage OP managed to get out 100 metres in front of us but we managed to climb back to within a boat length. OP did a great job of covering us by dumping on us ,and matching jybes. This was match racing at its best with each of us using the other as a bench mark to see were we could adjust the trim to get better boat speed.
At one stage we were next to each other with OP holding us out less than 15 feet to windward as we headed for the beach until we were forced to call water on them when we nearly ran over some surfers, Matt says he could read the quicksilver labels on their boards and the Nav started to squirm uncomfortable when we were quickly approaching the shallows off cottlesloe beach. In the end it came down to one poor tack by OP that let us get an edge and gain a boat length over the top of them which we managed to keep until the finish.
We finished 20 seconds in front of OP with Knee deep another minute or so behind. The NeXt factor were doing their usual good sailing and were only a few minutes behind that and looking in good contention to take out handicap honours but its always difficult to tell how the smaller boats are travelling until all are in.
Unusual for a Valmadre race we were in before 1pm and sat in the pen and had lunch before the trek to the bar for refreshments and the wait for results.
In the end as we thought Next factor took out overall honours with us as second and fastest but happy that we had another great day on the water.
For the first time we have hit the lead against OP and are now 7-6. We are sure they will hit back next time if we are not on our toes. Stay tuned for more stories of boys and their toys with nothing better to do.
Results will be here shortly:
http://www.fsc.com.au/2/343/1/_valmadre_cup_series_results.pm
Nav out
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