Race Report for The Coastal Classic 2010

Coastal classic 2010
The crew was Tom, Bill and myself.
Dad and I had a super hectic day the day before, as work on the boat was still being completed, found this disconcerting and stress full, as we were down there all day getting ready for the race and there were contractors working on the motor, and on the boat, tools, people and materials all over the show.
Anyway we couldn’t of asked for better conditions the next day, cranked up the brand new motor which started first time, Bill arrived with a mountain of food, and we were off to the start line. I decided to helm the start which is always nerve racking (especially after last year) and I opted to fly our new fractional spinnaker, in hindsight we were a little under gunnned, but I now know what this sail looks and feels like up and I reckon it would be good in a heavy blow astern. We positioned ourselves right on the start line and were one of the first boats over, however the spinnaker didn’t go up smoothly and we didn’t get our momentum up fast enough so suffered a bit of dirty air as others came up on us (still not to bad but room for improvement)
We struggled to keep up with Travelln man who were doing well the lightness of their keel and hull obvious, but the other boats around us reminded us we were doing OK, however we had to change to the masthead kite, this was done nice and quickly. We made good time through Tiri channel and overtook the V Team here after hoisting our masthead gennaker. Also caught up to travelln man and overtook before they headed more inshore and we lost sight of them. Held big Gen to within 5 miles of hen and chickens, where we dropped it and put up the fractional gennaker (we attached the tack to the end of the prod) this enabled us to pull out the furling headsail as well and have both sails pulling well. This was by far the best run of the race for us, hitting 12 knots fairly regularly but not breaking 13. Bill seemed to get the lions share of this excitement. This run lasted about 5hrs, and it was about 10 miles south of Brett that the wind started mucking us around and there was lots of sail changes (we possibly lost ground on the other boats around us here, but we coulnt come up with an answer to the fickle conditions), we got the new code 0 up for its debut, and overtook two boats, then the wind went aft and we put up the masthead spinnaker and they overtook us back as we wallowed. Eventually the Code 0 began to work for us as we approached Piercy island in the dark. Think we might have got to the hole in the rock around 11.30pm, and out of the gloom came Tavelln man, The Pirate and Hot Gossip. Travelln man got through more cleanly than us and we got through more cleanly than the pirate. Still with the code 0, me steering, and pinching to windward, the only negative thing was that out main wasn’t filling as was pretty useless as the code 0 overpowered it. we pinched and pinched, and without tacking sailed till we had the finish line abeam, then we furled the code 0 with much difficulty and sailed with the furling headsail to the line where we met hot gossip and the pirate (which proves we were equal in the light when we use the code 0), we should have pulled out code 0 here again as the wind was light and there was some tide pushing us off the line. We finished at 6.20 11th across the line out of the 28 in our division and 7th on handicap. Travelln Man finished about 10 mins ahead of us, last year we beat them across the line by a minute.
Calm conditions greeted us in Russell in the morning and we had a raft up with travelln man and two other boats, some sailors started to hit the piss immediately, Bill wasz picked up by his mate dave and took off for the night, tom and I went ashore for a shower a burger and a beer before heading back to the boat for another sleep. Went to the party till about 11.30 and chatted to Richard for quite a while, amongst others. Didn’t get any spot prize at the prizegiving. Picked up Bill from Opua wharf and motored most of the way home all through the night, motor seemed to be starved of fuel when bot was on a lean, and we also had a temperature alarm come on a couple of times which was a bit un nerving. We are now replacing the fuel tank for a more upright one rather than a flat one (when the boat leaned the intake was starved of fuel).