Simrad 50 Race report

Simrad 50 2011
With a great forecast ahead, I was hoping I would be feeling better by Saturday. However after getting home from the briefing I realized I was covered in spots (chicken pox). A visit to the doctor the next day didn’t shine much light on the situation except that he urged me not to go sailing. How was I to let an opportunity like this go by. I would have to try, and lean heavily on Bill if need be. I was hoping for a better nights sleep, friday night, but unfortunately itchy spots were in full swing and sleep was almost impossible, so dragged my sorry ass down to the boat the next day to realize I had no boat keys on my boat key ring, after 15 minutes or so we had undone the small screws and were inside, motor started well, and we were off. Attending to a raft of small jobs, including sewing up the rip in the mainsail from the RNI and entering the course into the GPS. We almost missed the start we were so preoccupied, and when we did hit the line we hadn’t given it much thought. The wind was very light and we started with the masthead kite, which we held to browns island then we hoisted the code 0, followed by the big blue gennaker, which we dropped when the wind increased. We should have chucked up a kite or small gennaker straight away, but instead waited a bit before putting up the fractional gennaker with the jib out as well, top speed under this set up was 9.4 knots. It wasn’t long and we were rounding passage rock, where Drop Dead Fred was parked up with her keel firmly planted on the rock not going anywhere. We had a few boats behind us at this stage and were in close quarters with Big Bikkies a ross 930, we had more speed upwind than them and slowly edged past them, and then decided to put in a reef, which saw all the boats behind us edge past us, then once sailing again we caught back up to big bikkies and past them, before they overtook us in the reach to motuihi green. Once around this we hoisted our fractional spinnaker (the face), and shook out our reef, which we held onto almost to Billy Goat Point. Then back to two sails once around the corner, we opted to stay out in the deeper water to make the most of the tide, although the windspeed got up to 25knots the sea conditions remained surprisingly flat. We put our reef back in, and made it to the finish line in only two tacks. I was feeling really crook and cold by that stage so went below for a lie down while Bill brought her home. Thanks Bill. Miraculously we were first on handicap for our division.