Simrad 100 Race Report

Simrad 100 Race Report Mix T Motions

It was a restless nights sleep, the night before. The wind that buffeted the house was frightening, so I got up and listened to the now casting on the VHF for a while …. Gusting 64 knots at Bean Rock, !@#$ that’s windy, so it was with a sense of unease that I finally got off to sleep. Things had calmed down a little by the morning, and the text came through that it was on, so it was down to business.

The Start to Rangi light

After sailing down the harbour and reaching the starting area, we watched the start boat intently to see where we would be going today, would it be Course 1, Course 2 or the heavy weather course. The call was made, The “S” flag was flown, the heavy weather course it was (a good call by SSANZ).
We decided to start with two reefs in the main and several rolls in the furling headsail. Tom was enjoying himself as he helmed us onto a good start and we were in close quarters with Danaide and Rattle and Rum as we headed towards Rangi light. Tom was considering more sail, then the gusts would arrive and we would round up occasionally, so we kept things as they were, happy with the pace, and me, in a fairly conservative mood for a change. After Danaide got in front of us, we positioned ourselves, so that if we did round up we wouldn’t collide with any boats to windward.

Rangi Light to the Haystack

The wind dropped a little on this leg and lulled some of us into a false sense of security, we saw Rattle and Rum hoist a gennaker, and I got some good shots of Mercenary sailing past us quite closely restling with their Gennaker. There was one other boat we could see flying a spinnaker, apart from that everyone was sticking to two sails and we did the same, shaking out the two reefs in the main and unfurling all of the genoa.

Haystack to Motuhuie

Gybing around the Haystack, we felt we were still doing ok, the boats who flew gennakers were a little ahead, but lower on the Rhumb line, so the gains were not great, a squally shower forcing them to drop early.
Around the back of Rakino the sea was nice and flat and we were getting good boat speed of 10-12kts SOG by GPS. Then Taiping sailed past us like we were standing still, they were FLYING!!! And I tried to capture the spectacle with the camera (truly impressive).
We managed to sneak past Mercenary, and lost track of Rattle n Rum, presuming they were ahead.
The wind was starting to increase again, and before rounding the corner and hardening up the sheets we put our two reefs back in, and rolled the headsail up a bit.

Motuhuie to the finish

It was getting pretty windy now, probably 40 knots plus, and we were all tacking into it. Mix T seemed to be going well in these conditions in comparison with some of the smaller boats around us, and the boat felt nicely balanced. The tide was with us, and we were lucky the tidal stream was slight, or the wind against tide affect could have been pretty uncomfortable. The biggest thing to watch out for on the beat up to Bean Rock was boats coming through on a starboard tack when we were on port, and we were forced to tack several times because of them. It was quite slow going getting around Bean Rock but eventually we tacked our way around. We were laying the end of the wharf and it was going to be pretty tight for crossing the line, so to be on the safe side we decided to put in a short tack, and this is when Recreation snuck past us beating us by 15 seconds. Giving us third on line and first on handicap and Recreation getting second on line.

With the upcoming Round North Island race it was good to see the boat perform well in a decent blow.

Thanks again to SSANZ for the series.