Sailing Club

Tell Tales

Let’s start this Telltales the way that Saturday started. At 10am a group gathered at the clubhouse, with Croc as instructor, to learn how to do three basic rope splices. And there were plenty of furrowed brows as he patiently explained it over and over again, until everyone started to master the basics. Thanks for sharing your knowledge Croc it was a very enjoyable and informative way to start the day.

Now, to the racing side of the day. It started off a bit hard to fathom, with a light westerly predicted (and occurring at the Cape) but a light easterly in the Bay. Which was nice, except if you got all hung up on the fact that the Bom and Willyweather were both saying that that shouldn’t be happening!

The top mark was set at 80° and, with a better than expected breeze, four boats headed off. The fifth (ignoring what every skipper had been told by the duty crew and going off to do a pre-race lap) rounding the pin (luckily for them the favoured end) a couple of minutes late.

The race to the top was a bit of a test of nerves. Affected both by light patches scattered across the race track and tidal influence, it really was ‘lucky for some’, unlucky for others. State of the Arc (SotA), after causing a port/ starboard incident at the start (with Windswept) made haste to the top mark. Ziff, needing to make up a couple of minutes and being in a good place to see what was happening ahead, chose to keep to the left and it paid off. But out front of both at the top mark was April Dancer.

Windswept and Skiffle Beat were drawn off to the right (tide perhaps?) and fell back a little. With only an 800mtr upwind all was looking good as the last boat turned left onto the first reach. But from here it would be a race in two parts.

Ziff took a slender lead on the second upwind. SotA slipped into second, holding off AD for a triangle, but eventually being overtaken. But from that point SotA only ever allowed a twenty mtr separation for the rest of the race.

And behind that bunch were SB and Windy going blow for blow, spinnaker launch for spinnaker launch. So close during one launch that SB’s boom contacted Windy’s stay. SB as windward boat correctly doing a penalty turn. At the end it was Ziff 1 minute ahead of AD and only ten seconds behind was SotA. And not too far back SB just seconds ahead of Windswept. So with the wind light but holding on all day, it was close racing and tactical sailing, making for a very enjoyable race to watch. Well sailed all!

Results

Life is good. Come Sailing!

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