Apollo Bay Sailing Club

Tell Tales

Sat. 30th November 2019

A different type of racing was held this week, the keel boats competed on a 3km course and the FF15’s were sailing 3 x short courses. Races with 3 minutes between starts.

After a lot of briefing, with course lay out and a no-go zone for the keel boats etc on the FF15 course, we started. Three keel boats were on the long course and 5 boats on the Flying Fifteen course. FF Windswept with the keen crew of Octavia and Maya wisely decided to retire as the wind gusted to 20 knots pre-start.

The remaining 4 FFs got a sprint work out, sailing their races for approximately 20 minutes each (2 laps in each race).

April Dancer dominated, by sailing very consistently. The SS Margaret (Russell’s boat) retired from the second race after attempting to finish after 1 lap and Shiralee (Stephan, Karlijn) blew out their kite at the end of race 1, then missed the second and had to chase in the 3rd race without the kite.

The keel boat race was an interesting tussle for 10+1 and Boheme. 10+1 getting to the first mark and rounding, with Boheme close behind. The Bohemians then passed the Tenners while the latter where busy watching their shiny red asymmetric (gennaker) not the competition.

Interlude, what can I say, they were lucky not to be awarded a DNF (did not finish) after a dodgy 1st leg that left race management unsure if they sailed the course???? possibly missing one of the marks but who were given the benefit of the doubt as surely such honest/ wise gents would never deliberately miss a mark????

So, in the end everyone had fun and, amazingly, no-one spewed in the duty boat while sitting at anchor for 2 hrs. Thanks to new super crew Charley “Race Officer” James who did a gr8t job on keeping the times and flags and birthday boy Matt who stepped in last minute to help out.

Life is good. Come Sailing!

To find out more see our website www.apollobaysailingclub.org.au or our Facebook group - Apollo Bay Sailing Club