Race report

Our race was very excited as was ZGYs from all reports.
We had a very strong wind (a SW) basically on the beam most of the way up, at times it was up around the 35 knot mark, we took a take no prisoners approach on the start by deciding to hoist the masthead kite. We were unable to get it filled with wind until we could begin to turn around north head, meanwhile several boats rounded up in front of us and we were fortunate not to t-bone them lucky Bill was on the helm, because my nerves were shot, once we were around north head we took off, and could only see train smash and geralda in front of us from our division. however the wind changed direction a bit when we approached Kawau so we decide to alter course in order to keep good boatspeed and go out side the hen and chicks at this point in time I was getting quite frustrated as the boat was performing poorly in these conditions rounding up frequently followed by some vicious sail flapping (all the numbers blew off on one such occasion), and we were unable to maintain a good course, so finally I gave in and decided to drop the big sail, we were now sailing a good course but boat speed had been significantly compromised, so we decided to put up the fractional gennaker, I would have thought this to be the ideal sail, but no, lots more rounding up followed, and the viscious flapping was too much for this much older sail and she ripped in two, ending up in the drink, we eventually got all the pieces back including the halyard which was retrieved with the boat hook, back to two sails, past hen and chicks now and the wind had lightened a bit so it was up with the fractional spinnaker, this is when we saw ZGY out in front of us and tearing along with the masthead gennaker. Then the dropped it and we got ahead, the wind now dropping more so it was back up with the masthead kite again, which we could now hold and we held it all the way to Brett, it was on the nose from brett to the finish and we sailed this bit really well, except we are alot slower than others in these conditions, we crossed the line 1 minute in front of Travelin Man, and 11 minutes in front of ZGY. 8th on line in out division and 10th on handicap, ZGY was 10th on line and 6th on handicap. We all thoroughly enjoyed the race, the only prize was a bottle of wine won by ZGY as a spot prize.