scott.projectsomewhere

The last two races before the JJ have been run and won over the weekend.

On Friday night, the handicap NAB twilight race ran in a gusty 20+ knot NNE breeze. We started well and led easily up the first work, but had some great battles with the spooners around the first couple of laps before they got pinned outside the ferry on their windward layline then capsized in a gybe on the second run.

We then swapped the lead with Project Racing before their broken gooseneck forced them to retire, after which we cruised around for a win, albeit a handicap win.

Not bad for our fill-in bowman Mark, who chalked up a win in his one-and-only 18′ skiff race.

The harbour was a complete shitfight on that evening, with tactics being dictated by clear lanes through the flotilla of yachts doing their Friday evening twilight. Hopefully we’ll miss most of that next week.

Sunday was more of the same, with a scratch race in 20-25 knots, and less boats but more spectators to deal with.

We raced pretty well, rounding the top mark in 2nd behind Euan, then fighting it out with the spooners again upwind before almost taking out the ferry and then burying the nose down a wave. Mark and I somehow ended up upside down under the windward wing before the trap hooks let go and the boat went over. John thought he could’ve saved it if we eased the sheets, but with him going downwind by himself with the kite up, we still would’ve had plenty on trying to recover it.

We finished 13th after spending a lot of time trying to get the mess sorted out.

But even with a big score in the last race, and still no bowman, we’re as happy with the preparation as we can be.

A couple of photos from Joliette Savage on the spectator ferry:

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 1:33 pm and is filed under 18' Skiff, 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.