scott.projectsomewhere

Saturday and Sunday of this weekend were basically a carbon copy of each other. Unfortunately I didn’t learn from my experience on Saturday.

I waited for the shifty westerly to settle down before hitting the water on the Moth with Matt and Ben. We raced a couple of races in a building breeze getting up to 20 knots or more. Ben lost a rudder foil and headed in, luckily for him. Then we had started what was going to be our last race and the breeze just went ballistic.

Matt capsized at the start and never got the boat upright, ending up washed onto the beach in Rose Bay. I sailed upwind about 200m before I decided it was time to head to shore, only to find a bearaway was next to impossible.

I would’ve spent the next half an hour in various states of capsized, at one point being dragged downwind at about 6 knots holding onto the forestay. I eventually made it back to the club and pulled the boat apart to go and join the rescue party to get Matt.

The 12 footers didn’t fare much better, with at least 3 of them ending up pulling in at Woollahra, and another ending up on the shore. At least we didn’t have a 2+ km sail upwind to get home to Kirribilli.

Ft Denison recorded a peak of something like 36 knots that afternoon.

Sunday looked a bit more promising. The 18s had their last race of the NSW Championship, and 7 had to win the race to beat us overall. We all rigged and went sailing expecting a fresh to frightening day. 7, Rag, Souther Cross and a couple of others were out earlier than the rest and went upwind and got the kite up and down a couple of times.

But then at about the time they went into the start sequence, the breeze went ballistic again.

We had a lazy capsize inside the 5 minutes, but at that point we were probably doing it a lot easier than most.

The committee postponed and looked like they were hoping for the breeze to die, in the meantime the rest of the fleet were being flogged to death instead. We sailed across the bow of the start boat to see what was going on, just as the breeze ratcheted up another notch and they quickly called the racing off, sending us back to shore.

So we made it back in with no dramas and the overall series. Nice to have our names on a trophy.

Most of the rest didn’t do so well. Southern Cross did a backflip going upwind and broke their top battens. 7 did a cartwheel and broke their wing-perp at the chainplate, then dropped their main and nursed the boat home. RWD sailed in with a two-piece mainsail. The AppliancesOnline pirate ship ended up on the rocks at Shark Island with a crew in hospital, a broken spinnaker pole, half the spinnaker attached to the spreader and no mainsail battens. Club Marine came home with no rig at all.

So it was an expensive day on the water, especially when everyone had to use their brand new gear since it was the season’s sail registration day. I wonder if there’ll be any warranty claims?

18ft Skiffs

NSW Championship

Monday, 15 December 2008

Sydney Harbour

The Rag & Famish Hotel team of John Harris, Peter Harris and Scott Babbage became the 2008-2009 NSW champions in unusual circumstances on Sydney Harbour yesterday.

Originally, the regatta was due to conclude on the previous Sunday (7 December) but Race 3 of the championship had to be re-sailed yesterday after strong winds forced its postponement three weeks ago.

The re-sail was due to decide the new champions between Harris’ Rag & Famish Hotel and Seve Jarvin’s defending champion Gotta Love It 7.

All competitors left the shore but once again strong winds prevented the race from being sailed.

Officials decided late yesterday to abandon the race and reduce the five-race regatta to four races – with the best three to count.

Rag & Famish had a win, second and an average points in Race 2 for a total of 4.7 points with Gotta Love It 7 in second place overall with a win, a third and fourth placing for a total of 8 points.

Yandoo (John Winning) finished third on 9 points (on a countback), ahead of Southern Cross Constructions (Euan Mc Nicol) also on 9 points.

Pure Blonde (James Francis) was fifth on 14 points and Active Air-2UE (Matthew Searle) sixth.

The win caps a great 2008 for John Harris who also won the International Moth World Championship at Weymouth, UK in July.

The fleet will now have a racing break until 11 January when the Australian 18 Footers League will conduct Race 1 of the Australian Championship.

That regatta will be the final hitout before the world’s premier event, the JJ Giltian Championship, which commences on Sydney Harbour on 13 February.

The 2009 Giltinan Championship will have an international fleet from USA, UK and New Zealand as well as NSW, Western Australian and possibly Queensland teams representing Australia.

A photo of the Rag & Famish crew is attached.

Frank Quealey

Australian 18 Footers League

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under 18' Skiff, Moth, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.