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2014 SSANZ SAS Series Evolution 100


Clipper

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Frustrating day. Terrible course choice.

 

Nah, it was a great course choice! Reaching into Little Barrier under screecher, leaping off a northerly swell and just SENDING it is something I'll never forget!

 

At least you missed the most frustrating bit, tacking up the channel in no breeze with the tide roaring out! You got one great lift through there.

Zig Zag to nowhere.JPG

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Freedom - Open 8.5 GBE

 

Had a pretty good start at the top of the line right behind Taeping and just had to wait for them to take off for some clear air. Tacked up to the Motahie Channel keeping Voom behind, crossing tacks with Stealth Mission and behind Borderline (like always).

 

Got the screecher on in the channel and lined up Little Barrier on the GPS. Shot the gap between two of the Noises (see below) which was a little nerve wracking at low tide but it paid off with keeping in touch with Stealth Mission and putting some space between us and Voom. Carried the screecher half way to LB doing 12-15kts but the breeze went lite and aft so swapped to the masthead kite. When we got about 5nm out, the breeze had come up again so we decided to swap to the screecher again but we dropped the kite in the water. Ended up going head to wind to get it from under the boat.

 

Had an epic screecher ride down the outside of LB doing 14-18kts, leaping off big northerly swells. The boat felt like a beach cat and loved being throw around! Kite back up to go around the back of the LB and found Borderline and Stealth Mission parked up, so the race kind of restarted there.

 

The beat home was frustrating with not quite enough breeze to really get the boat going but managed to lay through the Tiri Passage. The breeze went forward on us at the Rangi lighthouse and really died, meaning a slow beat to the finish against the outgoing tide. Got there in the end, 1.5 hours behind Borderline, 45min behind Stealth Mission and 45min in front of Voom, which is a pretty good result for us!

 

There is something special about going around Little Barrier. Its a pretty cool looking place. Thanks SSANZ and the sponsors Safety at Sea, Baltic, NZ Spars and Rigging & Evolution Sails for another great year.

Noises.JPG

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Frustrating day. Terrible course choice.

 

Nah, it was a great course choice! Reaching into Little Barrier under screecher, leaping off a northerly swell and just SENDING it is something I'll never forget!

 

At least you missed the most frustrating bit, tacking up the channel in no breeze with the tide roaring out! You got one great lift through there.

 

No, we didn't miss that. we spent hours doing the last 5 miles, as slow as 2 knots at the finish. Bean rock had 10-14 knots, we had

 

as shown by the track, we couldn't lay tiri channel, and a pretty basic course tactics wise.

 

kite halyard snapped, we ran over kite at pace, shredded it and damaged prod end.

 

had some exciting bits on the way out to LB, but not the best race, and very disappointed with how it turned out.

finish.jpg

whole course.jpg

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Has anyone a photo of 'Boxing Day Donna'? and would she -

 

Mahna Mahna

Do doo be-do-do

Mahna Mahna

Do do-do do

Mahna Mahna

Do doo be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do-doodle do do do-doo do!

 

It was a long night..... and morning on the SSANZ mothership. Anchor down at 5pm then up at 6am. Mix a couple of rums with no sleep along a rocking good Thai chicken curry and it did get a bit freaky at times :lol: :lol: :lol:

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A couple of rums with no sleep along a rocking good Thai chicken curry and it did get a bit freaky at times :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Okay you started it...... Woke up Friday morning with a horrible bug, by evening it was worse but I'd promised to take wife shopping (her birthday Saturday, sons Sunday, fathers day Sunday and I'm away sailing all weekend possibly, you get the drift :-) ) Anyway stupidly had butter chicken at the mall. That night I was seriously considering bailing and calling reserve crew. Went straight to bed an woke up slightly better.

 

Halfway through the race in inevitable started. Now if you've never had to use the head on a Ross 930 into 6 foot waves on a 45 degree angle in soaking wet clothes while feeling like you drunk 2 bottles of tequila the night before then you probably don't understand. 2 folded sheets of paper ain't going to cut it. On the third visit I discovered too late the toilet wasn't going to be pumping anything and the bowl was half full and was to remain that way for the rest of the race depending on angle of heel.

 

We'd arranged to meet at the boat this morning to tidy up sheets, sails and stuff, I did a dawn raid and removed all evidence and fixed the bog and tidied up. Nice start to fathers day. At least it was mine.... Radar on his birthday might not have been so thankful

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A couple of rums with no sleep along a rocking good Thai chicken curry and it did get a bit freaky at times :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

 

 

Halfway through the race in inevitable started. Now if you've never had to use the head on a Ross 930 into 6 foot waves on a 45 degree angle in soaking wet clothes while feeling like you drunk 2 bottles of tequila the night before then you probably don't understand. 2 folded sheets of paper ain't going to cut it.l

 

Haha yup Phil I have been there many times..Pepe RNI..... it doesnt get any easier in 40 kts at 50 degree heel either!

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Will write a full report tomorrow. We carried the mast head gennaker all the way but had to drop for the very last bit when the wind built. Then rehoisted to go across the top before peeling to the spinnaker around the outside. It was 2hrs of very intense sailing...

Just a shame about our handicap result. Not sure what more we can do!

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Charleston’s Report – Little Barrier & back

Had an OK start with space magically opening up at boat end after Triple 8 & Excess reached off down the line just the before the gun otherwise we looked locked out. Managed to roll over Triple 8 & Excess just before having to tack onto port at Rangi shoreline, dipped a few smaller keelboats to find a clear lane thru the keelboats & flopped back onto starboard to go out thru Motiuhe passage, Excess, Taiping & Triple 8 basically all tacked on our hip. Excess took the low road around the back Mototapu thru the keelboats & looked to suffer for it, after the Noises the order was us Taeping Excess then Tripple 888. Reach across to Little Barrier was very bumpy, we were leaping off waves & coming to very sudden stops into next, leeward hull was more like a half tide rock, would be nice to have some lifty things down there perhaps, boat speed btwn 15 & 18, was very hard to find any constant groove. We sailed the Rhumb line on this leg, Taeping was on our hip till about half way across, mayby 400m behind with Excess another 400 back, about half way across Taeping decided to go high & then come screaming back down with a reacher on, they looked to pass back thru the rhumb line about in line with excess so may have lost a place in this manoeuvre. Looked weird looking back at Excess as they looked quite elevated over the tops of the swells at times, so obviously doing a bit of foiling. At LB both Excess & Taeping came right back into us before were able to get out masthead on. About halfway round Excess stopped & rounded up with something broken I guess, this is the last we saw them , glad to see they were able to carry on & finish. Cleared Little barrier & the next obstacle, was the 3 Japanese naval ships one NZ Frigate which were doing some sort of manoeuvres directly on our Course line. Stayed high initially to avoid these which helped in the end. Managed to lay back to inside of Tiri, with Taiping directly behind most of way and slowly catching, could also Triple eights sail slowly getting bigger behind just . Once thru Tiri we were able to sail inside our woollies for max height ,being overpowered, in the perfectly flat water. We hit rangi shore right on Rangi light & laid across to to narrowneck, 2 more Tacks & finished with a nice little squirt of 17 knts boat speed across finish line. Most of our 15 minutes , on Taeping was in the last 8 miles of the race.

Was a race of 4 tacks & 1 Jibe for us, enjoyable boat speed race with Taeping & Excess until LB.

 

Cheers to SSANZ for a good series.

 

Shane

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The Entertainer report

 

It was a real race of two halves for us.

 

We were one of the tools that missed the course change and happily sailed off to Tiri... Glad we weren't the only ones though! Lesson learned and move on as we knew it was a long race. Hard mentally to try and play catch-up two sail reaching looking at your competition using extras km's to windward but we kept our nerve and had made up a bit of ground. We got to put up our fractional genny about 2/3rds of the way from tiri to LB and started to pass a few boats.

 

Wind built nicely and had us cranking into the high teens at times getting close to the mark. We chickened out from trying to hold the fractional past the lee shore as it was pretty tight and some forecasts had it building to over 30. Well done for Wild Oats holding their nerve and chasing us down; you must've seen some good numbers Oats?

 

Chose to put the fractional spin up for the run down barrier, which was fun in the waves, so that we could change down to the #3 headsail. Our gybe to to a major clusterf*#k with the spin wrapped around the forestay which took us a little time to sort out.

 

We were a bit exhausted and shaken after that mess and quickly (a bit prematurely) tucked a reef in for what we thought would be a real slog home. Time for settling down and assessing the evolution of Colin's B&E pie which with the addition of a touch of curry powder was a triumph. We didn't have quite enough power into the waves so shook the reef out quite soon after. Spent quite a bit of time trying to get a fast mode going to keep the boat going in the waves which paid off as we were keeping up with Namu relatively well but losing a bit of height. We saw Motorboat off in the distance with probably 40mins on us but knew they gave us a bit on H'cap so were determined to reel them in.

 

We tacked out from Kawau to keep our fast-mode going as trying to pinch to get round just choked the boat up everytime.

 

Closer to Whangaparoa the wind dropped and went south so we changed to the #1 and had what looked like an SR come belting up to us out of the dark and do the same headsail change (T-Rex?). We got some nice shifts closer in to the headland and snuck round and out of the tide as soon as we could. Dolphins were a constant companion from Kawau, I reckon the way our runners were humming in the wind kept them curious.

 

Carried on about 1/2 way to The Shore then tacked back to get the most from the changing tide over in the channel.

 

Coming in to the finish we were astonished to hear Motorboat (well done on the gun boys) calling in just ahead of us so our spirits jumped, we'd clawed back a huge amount to finish just under 5mins behind. As it turned out the star on PHRF was T-rex finishing over 20mins ahead of us on corrected, great effort guys. Rocky obviously had a good one as well in 3rd.

 

Bloody buggered at the end and enjoyed a beer on the trip back to dock. Thanks SSANZ for a great comp.

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Well done for Wild Oats holding their nerve and chasing us down; you must've seen some good numbers Oats?

 

And for the benefit of PC......

 

Thats another story, arrived at the boat to find batteries flat even though the charger had been on overnight, grabbed the car battery and jumper leads. Motor is driving me nuts..... eventually ran but because I had no idea how much we had drained the battery and how long the race would take, we ran no instruments to keep what we could in reserve for nav lights and radio. As it turned out even the boat batteries ran the LED nav lights and vhf fine.

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Quite a tough Race with heaps happening on Rocky.

We got quite a good start dipping behind Wild Oates at the pin end but took a while to get clear air, all very close all the way out through Motuihe with the usual suspects on the Rattle close by, Gaucho and Squid Viscous closer inshore, we decided to keep high in the hope of getting a kite run as the wind shifted, we snuck just inside the noises with the Rattle going outside.

We were making some little gains whilst 2 sail reaching but as soon as they put their gennaker up they started to smoke us.

Went for our pretend gennaker (flat cut kite) but probably just lost ground as we couldn't stay high enough to lay the Island so had to drop it again and head back up, the sheet decided to come un-clipped during the drop which made things interesting.

As we closed Little Barrier the wind went further south so we went to the small fractional Kite and were laying the Island nicely, as we watched faster coyote fly past under masthead gennaker we could see the wind building behind and most of the boats dropping the big gear, with no run off room we decided to do the same. There were some spectacular wipe outs from those that opted to hang on.

We 2 sailed around the corner and got the Kite ready to hoist but as we were already seeing 13's on the dial decided to keep 2 sailing and stay in close round the back, (after watching Mercenary Flying along under gennaker and then wipe out a few times I think 2 sailing was the better bet in the long run).

We keep in close around the back getting some nice lifts which set us up well for the slog back, Mercenary slowly closed in after the Island and passed us, she was just a notch higher and a notch faster we tried everything but just couldn't match her in the waves and she sailed off into the night.

We stayed high of Kauwau with some big waves and bangs for the next few hours.

Things got more pleasant near the peninsula as we went in close-ish and put a tack in caught up to some more boats in the light wind then changed to the 1 in the Tiri channel.

Crossed tacks a few times with a boat (which turned out to be Cool Change), they had a little boat speed on us so we tacked away and put a long board way over close to Motutapu, was a little nervous as we were the only ones over there but made some huge gains, we kept getting lifted along the Rangi shore and ended up cracked sheets all the way to Rangi Light.

Then a very pleasant late night sail into the finish.

 

Interesting series (not quite the weather we were expecting but it never is).

Certainly a different experience with such a rough slog uphill in a little boat, (was thinking about a for sale sign for a while). But the rest of the night made up for it.

Am even more impressed with the little SR's ability even 20 knots upwind in big waves.

Well done again to the Motorboat taking line and to T-Rex for taking it out on PHRF.

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Frustrating day. Terrible course choice.

 

I strongly disagree, Upwind start with tacking, then a reach, a run, a gybe, a run, a reach and a beat with some tacking. That's pretty much a sail boat race if you ask me.

 

Thank you SSANZ, Safety at Sea, NZ Rigging, Evolution Sails, Baltic. For another epic edition of this awesome series, we'll be back next year.

 

Team Borderline Sailing

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Upwind start with tacking, then a reach, a run, a gybe, a run, a reach and a beat with some tacking.

 

I strongly disagree ;-)

 

Aside from the fist few miles,and the last few, it was a reach and a lay. just look at the tracks?

 

84 miles - how many tacks did you do? How many gybes? What tactical options did you think about?

 

For the smaller/slower boats, they had more of a beat home with some options, so it possibly made for a more interesting race. For the faster boats, not so much.

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Clipper.

 

After Stealth leeward chicken rolled us while we we're stuck in a rain shower things got interesting, we followed him around the island and took the very risky inside route in the lee of Little Barrier, it paid off!! after a very nervous couple of mins and we rolled out from under the island with Stealth right beside us 200m to leeward. I would say that was tactical, as was the tacking up the shore.

 

Unlike Freedom neither Stealth or ourselves managed to lay Whanagaparaoa, we also had to tack up the Rangie channel, we hit the beach at Milford at tacked all the way up the bays to stay out of the horrible out going tide.

 

Do you think that you were sailing a bit too tight with your gennaker loading the halyard up? was this not a tactical decision?

 

Are you really claiming that it was a bad call on the organizers side, because as I see it you had some gear breakage which in turn slowed your progress to the point that the breeze was lighting off further hampering your progress? If my memory serves the 60 had a very large amount of reaching with possibly fewer tactical options, however I don't believe you had a go at the race committee about that course. I wonder what was your result like in that one? didn't you win that one on handicap?

 

For the record I really dislike people bagging the volunteers in our or any sport, they give up their time and watch others doing what they would probably much rather be doing themselves. Yes some decisions are not perfect for you, but they may have been perfect for others, it's impossible to please everyone all the time. If you have an issue, how about instead of bagging them publicly send an email to the committee raising your concerns. Better yet get on the committee and do something about it,

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This was our first series on board Substance and we loved every bit of it. We found the triple series to be very well run, well thought out and challenging at times.

 

Congrats and a big thank you to all the race organisers and volunteers, you did a fantastic job. Thank you also to the race sponsors, I am sure that without you there would be no race.

 

We had a really good last race with all points of sail covered in all conditions and some great competition between ourselves and Rafferty Rules with the lead changing several times over the course. Congrats to them for getting us on line by 3 minutes in the end, nice one Phil.

 

Already looking forward to next years event, where do I sign up?!!!

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For us in the Charleston a really enjoyable race. Taeping never gave up and pushed us hard all the way. Truly very tactical however. I/we find the reaching in an overpowered multi to be every bit as challenging as picking shifts going up and downwind. What with sail selection, anticipating lifts or knocks ,deciding to take high or low roads in terms of speed or safety then deciding the beat trade offs for extra distance for best waypoint closing speed e.t.c . I find this easily equal if not harder than going up and down wind in these craft. I reckon that with the plethora of modern reaching sails employed by many modern monohulls reaching and broad reaching to downhill is also harder than ever ( probably more pricey to ) .

What happened on excess behind little Barrier? You lads were right there then - not???

 

Cheers Casey

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Do you think that you were sailing a bit too tight with your gennaker loading the halyard up? was this not a tactical decision?

Is that serious question? Not at all. Was it bad maintenance? Sure.

In our little boats, when pushing with the kite up, I wonder if the kite will be OK, the rig will be Ok or we will flip it. Never once - is my halyard OK? are my sheets strong enough? etc ect.

My fault yes, but irrelevant to race course.

 

(and when it happened we weren't sailing tight)

 

Are you really claiming that it was a bad call on the organizers side, because as I see it you had some gear breakage which in turn slowed your progress to the point that the breeze was lighting off further hampering your progress? If my memory serves the 60 had a very large amount of reaching with possibly fewer tactical options, however I don't believe you had a go at the race committee about that course. I wonder what was your result like in that one? didn't you win that one on handicap?

The first race and the second race have no course options. The course is the course.

If you ever looked behind to see how we go on a reach, I would say it is our worst point of sail compared to the other multis. We lack the power of you or stealth and the balls of freedom!

we did OK in that one by managing the corners and sail changes better than some.

 

The first post on this thread is a question of how the course is chosen on the day. The answer was course 1 unless it looked like a reach each way. The forecast we looked at and the routing on predictwind suggested a reach and an easy lay. for course 1. It is a bit on (in?) the nose booger to suggest I did not like the course because of the result.

I didn't want that course before we had even started the race!

 

Clipper, the first choice will be to do the #1 course except if it is going to be a reach each way, generally speaking the plan is to get a mixture of sailing conditions

 

 

For the record I really dislike people bagging the volunteers in our or any sport, they give up their time and watch others doing what they would probably much rather be doing themselves. Yes some decisions are not perfect for you, but they may have been perfect for others, it's impossible to please everyone all the time. If you have an issue, how about instead of bagging them publicly send an email to the committee raising your concerns. Better yet get on the committee and do something about it,

 

I agree with you here. I have clearly worded my preference for the other course given those conditions in an inappropriate way. Everyone else in the multi division that has posted here was very happy with the course choice, so it must have been the right one for the day. It appears I am in the minority, or alone in my opinion.

Apologies if my comments upset anyone, the SSANZ guys do a brilliant job of running races, and it is my favourite series of races of the year.

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