Winter series 08 Race 5

The metservice had once again forecast 30 to 40 knots! Its getting to be a bit of a joke, every weekend forecast 40 knots and never seeing over 20. However they did get it right with the rain! To have 13 boats start, including 7 in the open Div is an excellent turnout with that kind of forecast!
The start was a 10 to 20 knots, swinging from N to W leaving us baffeled for sail selection on X Factor. In the end we chose to start at the boat end of the course, with the reacher up, ready to peel to the masthead kite. The majority of the fleet chose the pin end and started with Fractional kites. Dirty Deeds and Taeping had a bit of a tussel right on the start gun with Taeping being forced to tack and gybe before starting. Dirty Deeds and Helvetica both had excellent starts and put their massive masthead kites up. This paid off for them with a big lead on the rest of the fleet by the first mark, Dirty Deeds even just sneaking past us as we dropped our Kite.
The first beat was quite gusty and the fleet spead out a lot some going right towards Rangitoto and some going left towards Takapuna. The couse was virtually a windward leeward from Oraki to Saltworks to Northhead to Saltworks to Resolution. Taiping passed us on the first run, held us of in the second beat and extended in the final run. Near the end of the race there was a massive hole, followed by the very light easerly and heavy rain. At this point once again Dirty Deeds caught up to us and were right on our tail all the way to the finish.
As the light easterly came through with the tide running out at full stream the boats further back suffered a lot, one of those races where the newer boats do well on handicap! It also meant that both Drumbeat and SS Penelope just missed the time limit.
It was really good to see Mike Wayman take the Drumbeat out again, she looked great powered up to windward and we got some good photos. It goes to show you dont need a raceboat with fancy sails to have fun and join in the racing, hopefully we can get some more cruising boats to join in the racing!
Groucho Marx wasnt quite ready, Gary emailed me on Friday saying he wouldn’t make the start, hopefully we’ll see him for the next one though. “This Way Up” came out and did better than I expected since it was there second time they ever sailed the boat and it was covered with weed! For some reason the RNZYS put them in the 8.5 Div, even though I rang them and gave their handicap and said they were N div, I guess I should say N for Nelly as its hard to hear the difference between M and N on the phone!
Both Sundreamer and Hard Drive were shorthanded, good on them for coming out regardless. Helvetica and Exodus continued their battle, with only 25 seconds between them on line and 11 seconds on handicap. Justin had a good result on Ocean Pacific, finally getting the hang of the multihull sailing! Brett finally relaunched Akarana Express and had some spectacular hull flying moments in the prestart, it great he has joined in the RNZYS series.
Congrats to Taeping for Line Honours in the Open Div and Combined Results, and Dirty Deeds who cleaned up Line Honours for the 8.5s, First on Handicap for the 8.5s and first on Handicap for the combined results.


RNZYS Results Page