Sailing Club

Tell Tales

With all the hot weather over the recent days, there was some trepidation whether the Saturday’s regatta would be cancelled as hot weather usually brings strong winds. Nevertheless, despite the warm summer morning, there was a nice 10-15 knot breeze blowing in the bay. Sailing was on! The regatta saw 6 boats in the fleet, a mix of five Flying Fifteens, an OK dinghy and a keel boat.

Promptly after the race briefing at 12.30, Helena G, the race duty boat, went out to lay down the course. There was a decent swell outside the harbour which was going to make it very uncomfortable for the race duty crew and competitors. At least there was some decent wind for the sailors.

However, just as Helena G returned to her position at the start line and the sailboats started leaving the harbour, the wind dropped off. Suddenly, it became a challenging task just to make it to the start line. In fact, the swell started pushing some of the boats to peril – April Dancer was being slowing pushed to the rock wall, while Ziff was drifting towards the beach. Helena G went to check up on them only to find that the oars were in action to help drive the boats out of danger.

The race duty crew was on the brink of pulling the pin on the whole race when, with 15 minutes to go, a puff of wind appeared from a new direction allowing all the boats to make it to the start line just in time. As the flag fell and horn blasted to indicate the start of the race, Ziff, which not long ago looked liked it was going to be beached in front of the surf lifesaving crew, timed it perfectly to cross the start line in the first position. Meanwhile, Zebra Crossing, an OK class dinghy, was caught off guard while playing cat and mouse games with April Dancer and crossed the start-line last.

All the dinghy’s were off and racing. Meanwhile, the keelboat Ten+1 misjudged their start and found themselves having to do a couple of tacks to get back to the start line and start their race.

The wind was light, and as it shifted by nighty degrees, it allowed the boats to head straight for the top mark instead of the usual zig-zagging. After rounding the top mark, the wind started playing more games with the fleet. The breeze became sporadic, very localised and kept on changing direction. The big swell didn’t help either to keep pointing boats in the right direction. All in all, everyone was having a very tough time in the warm conditions.

Judging the rate of the progress, the race duty crew decided to shorten the race, so only the first triangle and the return leg were to be run. It was a wise decision – the dinghies were struggling to progress and Ten+1 withdrew from the race because one of their crew fell on the deck as the boat was rolling about in the swell. Luckily, no injuries resulted from the fall.

For the dinghies, the run to the finish looked like slow motion. One moment a boat would be moving at reasonable pace only to stop dead in their tracks a few moments later. April Dancer and Zebra Crossing were in a drawn-out drag race to the very finish with Zebre Crossing riding one wave ahead of April Dancer and getting across the line only four seconds ahead. Ziff crossed the line a couple of minutes later, followed by Skifflebeat not far behind. Euffamism managed to find a hole from which they didn’t move for quite a while, which reflected in their result.

Eventually, the wind picked up for them, allowing Euffamism to get going. As they crossed the finish-line, they hoisted the spinnaker in celebration and sailed with it back to the harbour to join the celebrations with a BBQ, drinks and great company.

Results

Life is good. Come Sailing!

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