Sunday’s Blues Point Yacht Club race was held in beautiful conditions, conditions that were in stark contrast to the preceding week that featured strong winds rain and un-pleasantly cool weather. We will not begrudge the rain as it is needed although it is a little frustrating that it falls along the coast and not west of the Great Dividing Range where our drought stricken farmers could really use it. The conditions on Sunday were almost perfect for us, except that the wind and handicap conspired against us.

BPYC races are pursuit starts, in this race we started off 35 minutes, 3 minutes ahead of a J/109 (“Blue Sky”) and 6 minutes ahead of an IMX 38 (“Martela”) and a whopping 17 minutes behind a Farr 36. The conspiracy between weather and handicap was too much for us, the wind was holding up in the 12 to 15 knot range until we were on our final run down the line when there was wind shift from the south west to the south east accompanied by a speed drop to 5 to 8 knots, the boats that started ahead of us had the benefit of the sou’wester while we together with Blue sky and Martela had to battle the reduced winds from the start.

We finished 5 seconds behind Martela and 36 seconds ahead of Blue Sky although Blue Sky’s missing their start time by about 2 minutes probably made the handicappers efforts look better than it actually was. Our finish was about 23 minute behind the Farr 36.

The race was pretty un eventful being bit of a soldier’s course, although the heart rates did rise a bit as we were approaching the final mark, the Sailing Australia mark just off Shark Island, where we were windward of a fleet of Couta boats heading for the same mark, as they had right of way to the mark as well as having rights around it we decided to give them plenty of room, especially as we did not know where their next mark was and not sure of their manoeuvrability if we got into a tussle. The biggest problem was a large sailing boat (under motor) positioned at the mark with a load of spectators aboard, they were fixated on the couta boats, fortunately one of the spectators was a little moreaware of their surroundings than the helmsman who needed quite a nudge from the alert spectator and respond to our hails and whistles and give us the room to be able to give the couta boats the room they were entitled to.

As it transpired there were 3 finish lines set very close to each other, ours, the couta boats and a dinghy race, all three fleets were hitting the line at the same time ass us, Martela which flew a spinnaker on the short run to the finish, took a very wise decision to douse the kite and finish bare headed to give them more control in the very busy water – a very smart decision. Ann who was on the helm was quickly sedated with a glass of bubbles as soon as possible after the finish, the rest of the crew had a medicinal beer before setting course to the west to return to Greenwich.

When is 2nd last a good result? When you win a 2 boat race!

We have written before about the Blues Point Yacht Club, it’s a great little inclusive club that is based in the Blues Point Hotel, we have been doing a few of their races over the last couple of years, however this year we decided to do the entire series, made easier (for us) by being, with only a couple of exceptions, on Sundays. We hope that this works out for the club as today there were only 2 starters, Ourselves and a Seaway 25 Megisti. Although Chris the Club’s Commodore has been saying for the last week that he was expecting a very small entry.

These race are handicap starts, which without the stress of start line crowding make for a relaxed race. Ann steered today and must have wondered if we were ever going to finish after being completely stranded for about 15 minutes as we sat there watching and waiting for the south easterly coming out of Rose Bay to reach us. The wind did eventually fill in to a fairly constant 5 to 8 knots which was enough to get around a course starting at Clarke Island, down to Manly and back via a little loop around Shark Island.

We were able to make up the 30 minutes we gave Megisti on the work from Manly to Steele Point, and finish the race in first place, as usual it was great to catch up with our competitors back at the Blue Point Hotel where Hugh, Megisti’s skipper was mentally trying to rationalise if he was last or second.

Hope there are more starters next race, these are really enjoyable events.

Back in February this year we had one of those moments that we all would like never to happen, In race 2 of the Twilight Autumn series we had a coming together with Paul William’s Jeanneau 36i “Takana”, while I believed that we were in the right, we ran into a boat that should have stayed clear of us, we tried to avoid them but circumstances were against us. At the time I noted “Subject to Protest – We should be OK – But you never know.” The protest result was that both boats were in the wrong and were to be disqualified.

We appealed that decision with Sailing Australia and I am extremely relived that our appeal has been up held. Unfortunately this still does not take the bad taste away that we did have an incident with another boat and that incident left both boats with some damage. I was never comfortable with the Protest Panel process on this occasion and while I respect that all involved are volunteers giving their time freely I suspect that a better result with far less acrimony could have been reached, interesting that the appeal decision included the sentence “The format of the hearing decision mixed the facts and conclusions.”.

A copy of Sailing Australia’s Appeal Decision is displayed below, it is two pages the pages can be scrolled by clicking on the image and using the up/down arrows at the bottom. The full PDF can be down loaded from G-whizz-vs-Takana-Protest-Appeal.pdf

Also a special thanks to the guys at Sailing Australia who give their time to process these appeals, time that could be better spent in other more productive pursuits if the original protest panels were more considered in their decisions, not to mention we the competitors that should be able to keep out of each other’s way.

G-whizz protest appeal upheld!

As is usual the West Harbour Winter Series has been an enjoyable series, we get to race against non GFS boats on some interesting courses around the West Harbour Islands and various marks.

Last year we won Division 3 on PHS and were 4th on scratch (Interestingly the same scratch result as this year) this years PHS result was not quite as flattering. For most of the series we were achieving reasonable results, but seemed to be missing that little something, not only were we unable to keep pace with John Veale’s Dehler 32 “Hasta La Vista” a boat of similar proportions and performance to G-whizz but were on many occasions behind boats that we know that we can beat. We can make excuses, but in the main we were just out-sailed.

In race 6 (the second last race) we had a great race long tussle with Jefferson Smith’s Elan 320 “Star Elan”, it was a bit weird though as the Elan 320 has the current fashion wide stern design, making her very good at reaching and running, especially under spinnaker, G-whizz is more of a classic design and generally a faster boat to windward, all race we would fall behind her on the works but catch up and sometimes pass her under spinnaker, the opposite  of what previous performances would suggest and also opposite what the respective design’s polar charts would suggest. Later that afternoon Ann and I went to the Longueville Sporting Club to have a drink with Jefferson to personally congratulate him on his performance. It was then that Jefferson suggested it was time that the Elan’s showed what they were capable of and show the other boats what our sterns look like, especially the other GFS boats in the division.

We started Race 7 with a hull that had been cleaned only days before and with sufficient crew to fly spinnakers, after a conservative start we were up with the leaders on the work from Woolwich and down to the Schnapper Island mark, just after this mark we called Starboard on Pam Joy’s “Tana”, this allowed us to get over to the side of the channel that appeared to have the best wind but unfortunately it started a little chain of events behind us that dramatically hampered a few boats’s race position, Star Elan included.  The move worked out well as the wind held in and we were able to make ground on Hasta La Vista and clear the field behind. We decided on using the asymmetric spinnaker on the broad reach back to the Woolwich mark and managed to perform some a than perfect Spinnaker raise and a few less than perfect gybes, so less than perfect we let a few boats past. We decided to leave it up for the very shy run down to Mann’s point, this was bit of a master stroke as we did a good gybe and with a true wind angle of around 100 degrees (an angle that G-whizz and her Assy uniquely thrive in with lightish winds) we managed to re-pass the boats that had caught us and nearly caught up with Hasta La Vista. Only to give it all back with a slow headsail raise and a less than perfect drop, it was about 100 meters passt the mark before we could  head back into the wind on the work back to Cockatoo Island.  On this work we were able to take advantage of a huge wind shift to pass every body and get to the mark nearly 50 meters in the lead. At this point I am not going to say it was luck, Graham, on the main and I had quite a discussion about what the wind was doing, we decided to take the chance and it worked out.

The next lap was just a matter of not doing anything wrong and cover the boats behind us, we even left the spinnaker in the bag (the crew did suggest that we had had enough spinnaker practice for one day) and opted for a poled out headsail on the final run. A fastest time for the day was a great way to finish the series.

The combined Clubs West Harbour Winter Series commenced on Sunday 5th of May with G-whizz sitting forlornly on her mooring. There were some conflicting events that meant we were unable to race. An upside was that I was able to fill in on the start boat for the first race, with 4 divisions to start and just the 2 of us on the boat life got a bit hectic for a while. This experience did bring home to me the great work the volunteers in our sport do (probably true in most sports come to think of it). These people give their time to enable the rest of us to  participate in our sport.

Race 2 was never going to be a great result, G-whizz’s bottom had not been cleaned since the end of the Twilight series and she looked like she was hosting a whole ecosystem underneath. Boat speed was way down and we were consistently 1 to 2 knots below our target speeds. While we did not bother the time keepers to much and watched some of our target boats (Those that we tend to measure ourselves against) disappear into the distance it was a very pleasant day on the water, and great to catch up with the crew whom we hadn’t seen for a little while, good news is that they enjoyed the day out and have committed to returning and are looking forward to getting the big coloured sails out in the coming races.

Sixty five yachts fronted up to the starter  for the first race in the Autumn Series, thirteen of them in Blue division.  The winds were a little above the comfort zone for Wes the light weight number 1,  requiring Graham on the main to be on alert, he really earned his beer after the race. Our start was less than perfect as we were unable to pick our way through some starboard tackers to get to our desired position.

We were able to make up ground on most of the field with the exception of Agrovation, Worlds Apart and Aetos, still a fourth fastest was not a bad result, pretty close to our objective of finishing the the top three.

The following photos have been lifted from the GFS Facebook page, were taken by Kathryn and posted by Simon Elliott.

Elan 340 G-whizz. Some close racing in Black division

Elan 340 G-whizz. Humbug starting to get a bit busy

Elan 340 G-whizz Leading a pack through Humbug. Unfortunately not enough of them are in our division.

Elan 340 G-whizz. Another gaggle of yachts in Humbug

Elan 340 G-whizz nicely powered up heading for the finish in light air.

G-Whizz Elan 340

The Twilight race on the 21st of November could be described as a bit weird, it started in relatively normal conditions, well about as normal as the conditions can be when there is a Nor’ wester blowing on Sydney Harbour. A brief explanation, North westerly winds are common in spring in Sydney, they generally do not act as forecast and in our sailing area can create some unpredictable topographically induced shifts. On this evening the wind was behaving itself, 12 boats started and made their way through Humbug, then almost as if choreographed in the vicinity of Greenwich Point most of the starters lined up like a social raft up, and stayed that way on the run down to Goat Island. A crew member could have literally hopped from boat to boat across the whole fleet, this was broken a little when the line of yachts came up to a tall ship on a party cruise, we were fortunately the leeward boat and decided to pass the obstruction to leeward. we couldn’t see it but we could hear  on-water rule discussions coming from the other side the tall ship, unfortunately we could also hear some fibreglass to fibreglass contacts. I think we chose the better strategy.

The rounding of the Goat Island Buoy was an experience with about six yachts all trying to get into a space that would normally only be large enough for one. Again there was much discussion about the rules and unfortunately again some contact, one of which generated a protest, this was right beside us and we took the safe option of getting clear of the ensuing melee as quickly and safely as possible. This was most fortuitous as about 5 minutes later the fleet was hit with a rain squall, we eased sheets to completely de-power the sails but not allow them to flog uncontrollably and we had the room to let  the boat go where she wanted to go, after the worst had passed we pulled on the main and started sailing again. in hind sight I made a bad call, we should have trimmed the main to keep sailing, albeit with as little power as possible allowing us to continue sailing our own course and probably getting a far better result, right or wrong strategy it did mean that we didn’t suffer any damage, the boat basically stayed vertical and the worst that happened to the crew was a severe rendering. At one stage there was a call on board from a crew member asking if anyone wanted there wet weather jackets, but by the time answers were received it was too late. We later heard that there were some yachts that finished in water too shallow to navigate and also against the Balmain sea wall, there apparently were a also number of damaged sails an some rigging damage, fortunately no damage to humans. While no one was concentrating on the instruments we did see over 31 knots (good fun with a yacht rigged for 10 – 15 knots, as most yachts were). There were some reports of wind speeds in the mid 40’s. The adjacent photo is a still from a go pro camera on David Edmiston’s “Passion X”.

After the squall passed there was, as is usual after such events in Sydney, beautiful weather, very light breezes and we were stone motherless last, but no damage and happy to have got away “Scott Free”.

Elan 340 | G-whizz

The forecast was for a pretty fresh southerly wind that was to be increasing through the evening, but what happened was something quite different.  Given the forecast it was incredible that the race committee were at about 5:00 pm considering abandoning due to a lack of wind, further complicated with an incoming tide that could make it difficult to get out of Humbug. We decided to hoist “Reg“, the heavy number 1 up the forestay, while the light weight number 1 “Wes” was the first choice there was still a chance that the wind might fill in and Reg can handle light winds without loosing too much and pretty fresh winds while still giving a pretty good degree of control. but the wind just got lighter as the race progressed, contrary to the forecast, but I guess that’s Sydney in spring.

We had a very good start that was made better by a hole that opened up between the stern of Worlds Apart (Jeanneay 39i) and bow of  Aetos (Northshore 38) that allowed us to be first across the line and lead the fleet out of Humbug  together with Worls Apart went the full distance to the Birchgrove shore to get the reverse eddy that runs counter to the tide along the shore, or at least did until the new Birchgrove Ferry Wharf was

constructed about six months ago, Izzi and Aetos the two Northshire 38’s tacked early and while sailing against the incoming tide stayed in the wind,

the end result was that the four of us while sailing somewhat apart were swapping places when we crossed each other on different tacks, a situation that existed until we had all rounded Goat Island, although it did appear that the other three were getting the better of the shifts. (I felt that we were being out sailed and they were picking the shifts better than us). We were not able to make any gains on the run back to Greenwich Point, it really did highlight that we need to pole out the headsail on these longish runs if we are to stay with the longer boats, but at least we were able to hold off the

rest of the fleet. A fourth on scratch (As well as a fourth on handicap)  is up there where we want to be, and a beautiful evening on the water where the expected wind and rain did not eventuate was a real bonus.

Results

Elan 340 | G-whizz