Apollo Bay Sailing Club
Tell Tales
5th March 2018
Unfortunately, Sat’s race was cancelled due to a forecast for 40 knots bang on start time. Race Management notified all sailors early so they would not spend the morning wondering if we were going out or not. Sunday was a perfect sailing day and with a small fleet of just 4 boats it was decided to run the Big ‘S’ Course.
This involves a short reach to port from the top mark a gibe onto a huge reach across the course then a gibe to starboard round the bottom mark and back up wind, 3 times. It sounds complicated, but it’s my favourite course and I love it! It’s designed to get spinnakers out and go fast and Sunday is the perfect day to be a bit reckless.
The start was very close for the FF15’s, with the magnificent Its Magic hanging back enough to allow the smaller boats to cross before them. A very generous sporting gesture I thought. The wind shifted to the right so all of the boats stayed together. On the reach the FF 15’s tossed their kites out and planned across the longer section, woohoo. Its Magic still found the reach a bit short for their massive kite and kept it in the bag. After 3 up winds the race was close and it was going to come down to the last big reach. Its Magic had worked themselves into 2nd place behind the very consistent, make no mistakes boat Ziff. Affrodite was a close 3rd and April Dancer 50m behind them. Any mistake or kite blunder from any boat was going to cost them a place.
In stepped race management and after a hail to the lead boat Ziff and a radio call to the fleet we moved the lower end of the big reach to be a fun 1.5km blast to the finish line. The pressure was on. Ziff planed the whole reach with the crew screaming like they were having a baby (it was a bloke by the way). The amazing Its Magic put up the pole, ready to launch, Affro came alongside Magic and the wind went to 16 kts, 17 kts then 20!, the strongest of the day by far. It hit Affro knocking them down. Magic was already planing without the world’s biggest kite. They wisely chose to keep their powder dry and leave the massive kite in the bag. Affro recovered and managed to pass Magic to take 2nd spot. April Dancer saw the drama up ahead and kept their kite in the boat as well and still managed to plane to the finish.
The commodore supplied food after we returned to shore and was planning to hand out prizes from the lost property box, but it turned out most of the stuff was Geeks’ anyway.
Lids’ favourite sailing course ‘The Big S'
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Apollo Bay & District Community Bank, Great Ocean Road Trading Post, Waterfront Motor Inn, Café 153, The Fishing CoOp, Surf-n-Fish, J&C Marriner Earthworks
Life is good. Come Sailing!
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