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SSANZ Triple 2021


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23 minutes ago, waikiore said:

Well those keen fellas on the mighty Deep Purple showed how to go out of the start powered up and away , getting more miles for their entry fee than most gybing at pace out of the harbour, we had a good view from the front of the adjacent line. When we finally caught them up towards Shearer Rock I thought I would go close and hand them some hot pizza but decided conditions a bit boisterous and didnt want to be accused of outside assistance. Feeling quite second hand today -it was a bit bouncy for gentlemen sailors.

A few notables: Booboo and Damon as usual making the best of their equipment showing the way, and the old Innismara isnt too shabby on the wind in +30 knots even if they did start 10 minutes early with the piedys.

What were you on? Yeah the Rogue 2 went awesome upwind. I couldn't believe how they pulled away from a Kerr40

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Thanks to SSANZ for putting on the event, our main competition has been Hard Labour and Playbuoy over the last few years and we really looked forward racing these teams. All week I was checking the forecast sites hoping the front was going to go through either early or late, I declared that anything that had a 4 in it and I wasn't going. Of course we went and of course the top sustained windspeed we saw was 35!

For me 20-30 is a the top end of the fun zone in the gulf, after that its ok-ish but things break, claret gets spilled, sailmakers get happy...

We set up with our small jib and kite, then at the start it looked medium jib and big kite for a while but survival instincts kicked in (common sense). After the gun we soon has plenty on with an entertaining chinese exiting the Motuihe channel, the Labrador crew offered cheerful condolences on their way past. We sat on there for a while with the mast in the water but soon popped back up with the kite making a huge racket, sheeted on made for the inside corner of Waiheke. It was a real sleigh ride down the front, solid 12-13-16 kts to Gannet. The puffs out of Oneroa were fearsome, boats were wiping out all over the place. so it was with some relief to 2 sail in the lee of Waiheke to Shags.

We were bow to bow with Playbuoy to the corner and hoisted again for the ride to the calf, where it got pretty fresh just as we dropped, trawled and recovered but they got the jump and were probably had 5 minutes on us at the bottom corner. 

They went right, we split left and when we can back after over 6 hours of tough racing it was a marginal port starboard cross! We match raced to Gannet bouncing them to the Starboard layline and rounded together within a boat length. They tried to duck through to leeward and we compressed eventually coming up the Rhumb line, in the dark from then on all we saw until the finish was two pairs of lights close behind. 

The final stretch was light and shifty, fortunately there were no holes to fall into and we got the gun. Pretty sore and creaky today, thanks to the Labrador and Playbuoy crew for great  racing, it doesn't get any better. Was our turn to get Cam on this one after he beat us on line by 2 seconds in the hundred a few years ago! 

 

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Another heavy air epic for the SSANZ 100.

On Shimmer we got a pretty good start and carried our new small kite (thanks Tony Harold your sails rock) down the Motuihi channel feeling pretty good till the beak of the pole twice popped open and we lost the brace.

Set the #3 and watched the competition make gains while co skipper turned the cabin into a work shop and rebuilt the pole ends till they worked again. Great, kite back up just before Oneroa, not so good, massive puffs coming out and carnage everywhere, Shimmer doesn't plane so when the puffs got big she started putting her bow a little bit under, made me a little bit worried.

Had a couple of "moments" which we managed to steer out of before the really big one hit and we rolled into an ugly Chinese, boat on its side, lots of water, somewhere in the S***T fight to get everything under control the pole went forward and we folded it round the forestay. Bugger. No more kite today.

Consolidated our position at the very back of our fleet, to add to our pain we watched Daydream another T34 carry a full sized kite and looked from the distance to have good control, these guys are really impressive what they can do in a 70's Kauri caravan

everyone seemed pretty same same on the reach along coromandel then finally we had some proper on the wind sailing, we had a great beat back to Gannet Think we got back in to the front half of our fleet through some pretty impressive waves and a couple of furious squalls, then managed to reel in Daydream and a couple of Stewarts on the tight reach to Shearer rock. The breeze really dropped on the leg back to the finish and we were a bit underpowered on our #3 but thought a change would be more costly, in hind sight I think we should have changed to the #2 but we did manage to hold off the boats following us.

Great day on the water, pretty bruised and sore today thanks SSANZ such a cool adventure.

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2 hours ago, Deep Purple said:

What were you on? Yeah the Rogue 2 went awesome upwind. I couldn't believe how they pulled away from a Kerr40

On Carrera it was epic to go for a double handed cruise, highlight was watching the some of the fleet flying at gannet rock, some great seamanship on display! We took an original 2011 J4 as didn’t want to wear any racing sails, and it delaminated on the way to shearer rock and we got passed by Rogue (those guys sailed really well including some slick reefing maneuvers). From then on we were 1-3kn below target and could only point 45 TWA as we nursed the sail home. Had the storm jib ready but with tiller and no autopilot and 30kn breeze didn’t fancy peeling unless we had to.

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On Tickled Pink we had a 16 year old who was a bit daunted by the puff that came through just before our start. So we took a very conservative route off the start away from other boats and with a goose winged #3. We managed to still be in the middle of the 1020s and ahead of the Y88s as we went around Rakino.

Stayed deep to avoid the wind shadow - poor Flashwave, and when we saw everyone was being brave put up the small chute. Then had a great ride. The speedo said we only did 13 but the damping can't have got a couple of the waves. Got up to the leading 1020s and hung onto Meister. Watched the class 88s with big gear slowly catching us, but they were taking their time. A real sustained puff came through a couple of miles before Gannet so took it easy and did a bare headed drop, tidied up and were still doing 11s under jib. Nona did a great job and held a gennaker all the way to the rock and just got past us, as did Babe and War Machine. Came out of Gannet nicely inside Meister and were soon through Babe, WM, and Nona as they struggled to put in reefs. Then had a neck and neck duel with Nona all the way to Shearer. The extra breeze and a slightly tighter angle at the end meant they were 50m in front of us at the turn, with Sister Moonshine a similar distance behand having had a good leg. Then a nice 2 sail to Haystack, We rolled over Nona and held off SM and Meister. But the Frog was easing away from us.

The early part of the beat back was hell. One sustained puff had us in hang on mode, plus rain, plus waves. Finally got into the lee of Rangitoto. Had good racing with a few Y88s, and tried to hang onto Meister and reel in John Barleycorn. Then a lay through in lightening breeze to North Head and another squall up to the finish. Great boat for boat racing, and an exercise in boat protection and picking your moments to push. Ended up beating the Y88s in our division and had all but 1 1020 behind us. Happy enough, especially with the young fella coming out of it having had a good time. Don't look at the hcp result though - unless you are the handicapper. :-)

Well done to John Barleycorn and the Frog (again). Both boats were racing the whole way. I think the Frog had a non class furler #1.5 which worked really well for them with a reef. And JB has new sails and sailed impeccably.

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Fresh, fun, surprisingly comfortable…..that’s probably sums up life on daydream n the SSANZ

committed to getting a better start this time so stopped being a puss and gave it a push…..wooling the kite was a bit of old school genius (good call Robbie)with the kite at full hoist all wooled up ,pole set, full main and #2 had us hitting the line just in time at full pace…..bit of a tug on the sheet and we were off at pace (well pace for us…it’s all relative eh)

we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves as the breeze started building and our range of safe steering narrowed (5deg up or down is a tight lane!) and the old girl dug in and sat 2knots above hull speed…pretty easygoing really.

Time to try a gybe, pick a lane, ….. “how are we doing this?” “Maybe 25knts is too fresh to attempt our 3rd gybe in anger”  oh well…twing lines to the deck and turn…..hairy when your digging a hole in the ocean

came through sweet….then the pole end shat itself….Must be a Townson thing eh Shimmer grrrrr or 1970’s pole ends…guess we are doing the rest of the race with the pole tied to the mast…that might work. Managed a moment to admire the cluster onboard our younger cousin Shimmer as they rolled down in 25knts MH Kite , pole less…..seemed to take a long time to get her under control and the whole time very edgy,  loose, and a bit busy when the inevitable wipe out happened it was back to business - sorry guys but it made entertaining viewing- loose as . The hole we were digging in the ocean got bigger as we passed oneroa…with 30 odd up the date and the bow starting to go under I was questioning the decision to put our biggest kite on…..oh well committed now….looks like sitting on 10.5knts is terminal speed with squirts into the 11s - way on the edge when your little wooden boat is never going to plane!!!. We were still in the hunt at the island turn  when the kite gave up not long after hoisting  in 34knts(was always on the cards)…..retrieved on the one tape left from the explosion and out goes the #2

The bash up to gannet confirmed my suspicion the the #3 would be a better sail as Shimmer slowly ate into us. Shimmer with their #3 and full main was making it look easy. Old Daydream was eating the sea state but we were over powered most of the way up. Lesson learnt. 

up until shearer’s the corners were pretty good …. But at shearer’s the navigation left us wet and tired…. I got confused between the rock and the bouy - bugger

Dropping breeze would look after us……yea maybe not as indecision around dealing with the channel cost us and we slid into the finish after dropping a few places……

all in all a lot of fun! Learning lots about the boat and our approach to course management.

dealt with a bad leak in the fuel tank, broken pole end, big wrap, couple of lay over wipe outs, blown out kite and to top it all off the motor didn’t want to suck water after we finished…..40minutes of bush repair needed - between skipper and skipper not a grumpy word spoken the whole time thanks old friend for a surprisingly relaxed adventure…..

slipped into Gulf Harbour at maybe 1am to the sweet tunes of Rogue II in full flight (beast of a sound system on that boat!!)…..would have stopped but we were rooted sorry josh  …..bring on the next one

 

 

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1 hour ago, Oldlog said:

wooling the kite was a bit of old school genius (good call Robbie)with the kite at full hoist all wooled up ,pole set, full main and #2 had us hitting the line just in time at full pace…..bit of a tug on the sheet and we were off at pace (well pace for us…it’s all relative eh)

For next time, wool is considered rubbish and falls under the trash rules if it goes overboard. 

TRASH  DISPOSAL

12.1 Boats  shall  not  put  rubbish  in  the  water. 

Some clubs used to have a clause in the racing rules that allowed wool to go overboard when setting spinnakers, but I haven't seen this clause in several years - at least in any Auckland clubs. 

The answer now is velcro tabs, full length zips or old-school socks.

Ofcourse if you ensure that all the wool falls on the deck and doesn't go overboard, all is good :)

ISAF Q&A attached. 

QA2013.029N003revisedJanuary152014-[16193].pdf

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Not sure I get the difference between pure wool and a dead animal floating. 
seems an odd interpretation of the no rubbish rule and it it’s intention

Besides my boat pre dates the invention of Velcro and the spin was first measured in 1984 so Velcro would be just wrong 😑 

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Good to hear we weren't the only ones putting our bow under, not a nice feeling pushing that much Ocean is it?

Well done on some great kite work getting to Gannet we were impressed on the younger cousin

bummer about your kite, did you see the black and yellow "flag" flying from the top of Portraits mast? not the only ones to destroy a kite.

So good to see two Townson on the top 6

looking forward to the 50

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Bit of a slow day out there for Legacy. Had a problem with the #3 when we came to pull it up 15 min before the start that led to filling that 15 min with pulling apart the feeder and ultimately swapping to the #2, rather than getting the kite set up. But started mid fleet and seeing some carnage happening around us and more breeze coming decided to hold off with the kite until we were at the NW corner of waiheke. By then it was blowing even more and we were keeping up nicely with boats around us flying extras, and with the boat being fairly new to us decided it wasn't a day for trying things out and carried on two sailing. Went reasonably nicely to cow and calf, had a few big squalls on the reach up to black rocks which had us put the 2nd reef in the main, then came to the beat.

With the #3 out of commission it became a choice of storm jib or partially furled #2. Went with the #2 and found the boat was comfortable, but probably a knot down on target speed. By durville we were 3nm behind Oddessy & the entertainer, which we roughly then held up to flat rock.

Bit of a conservative rounding of flat in the dark and then another beat as another 30kt squall came through meant we had the jib partially rolled away again. By motuora we were more like 6nm behind Oddessy which gradually stretched out as the breeze died and we ended up drifting in to finish in glassy conditions with help from the tide which was thankfully coming in by then. But we made it around on a fairly breezy day with no breakages and learned some things about the boat so still a good day out. 

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Well that was 'Entertaining'.

I decided from the start we would be conservative. I knew we were going to get the stuffing kicked out of us on the beat and I would not have dreamed of taking a 930 into that on purpose before so it was a case of 'see if the boat and me survive without any major drama'.

Under a full main, we hoisted the fractional jenny at the start, and half way up wondered if it was the right call watching Niksen disappear with their masthead A5. I also decided to stay out and jibed just before The Noises which was a good call in the end. The wind seemed much more stable further out but was still swinging around quite a bit and we witnessed a fair bit of carnage around us with a few shredded kites and many, many roundups. We hummed along at 12s / 13s and had a no drama drop at Gannet for the short reach up to Shag with a bit of an ease and hoist the fractional jenny again. Another good call not reaching for the masthead (which was debated) as we watched many around us wiping out. Of note was blasting past Katana and watching them fade into the background and catching heaps of the fleet who started before us. I didn't have a GPS monitoring speed and when it is on, the log does under read a bit. What we learned was that at 16 knots (or whatever) she develops a solid hum and that we redlined at a butt clenching 19 in that configuration. It may have been faster in one or two of those squalls, but honestly I stopped watching the instruments. Another no drama drop at Cow and Calf, and followed Kick's example and did a granny tack to carry on the reach with full main and class jib up to Black Rocks. What a pity the race didn't finish there, as shock and horror Niksen and half the fleet seemed to be behind us! Good call on that sail choice too, as we were still hitting 15s at times.

We got ready for the kicking and it didn't disappoint. It was reminiscent of a particularly bad attempt of trying to do a late (July) delivery back from Fiji and making a poorly timed stop at Minerva and getting the snot severely kicked out of us as a result, only to turn back and fly home. Next time I only go the other way to end up in warm weather!

The only mistake on the beat, I think, was not to tack and follow Hard Labour who headed back down the Firth. We watched with pained expressions as almost the whole fleet caught and passed us. We maybe should have thrown a reef in, but at under 20 apparent she was so well balanced. It was the 28s to 35s apparent that we were a bit pressed at times. We got to the turn at D'Urville just at sun down and decided to keep the same sail configuration up to Flat Rock. Tacking up to Motuora was interesting, as the depth decided to throw a hissy fit after all that upwind pounding and stopped working. Wowza, just when we really needed to know the depth trying to minimize the tacks in to Moturekareka. I was determined to make Motuora in one, as we had some or other pesky yacht on our tail at that time. I knew the western end of Motuora gets a bit shallow and thought we were standing out enough. More buttock clenching as the depth started to work again and the depth below the keel dropped from 5 to 4 to 3 to.... 0.5m below the bulb! Whew, made it and around the corner. We should have hauled out the masthead zero at that point, but I wasn't confident of not having another 30+ across the deck so we plodded on with full main and small class jib. Unfortunately the breeze died almost completely (down to 4knts apparent) as did we, oh well there goes the handicap placing. We tried hard to keep the boat behind us at bay, but they eventually caught and passed us as we ghosted towards the finish. I didn't mind after finding out in the results that they were a tad longer in the waterline.

The most amazing thing was that we had dolphins on and off throughout the race. I have never seen so many in one day before, and not that many up the ditch ever. Maybe there are some fish around again? Night time was extra spectacular as they lit up like torpedo's shooting in a stream of effervescent fizz just below the surface.

Awesome race (in hindsight now that I have recovered) and thanks to all at SSANZ waiting patiently for us to finish (almost) lucky last.

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2 hours ago, Shimmer said:

I wonder if SSANZ can re schedule the Lewmar 50? Presumably even if level 4 only lasts a week we will have a couple of weeks at level 3.

 

It's considered unfair to series competitors to reschedule races where the NoR doesn't already allow for this. There is an ISAF protest ruling on this somewhere.

Some boats may not be able to make the alternative date and as a result their overall standings in the series will be adversely impacted. 

To be able to reschedule races to a later date, an NOR needs to include the specifics, eg reserve days/dates that could be used. 

Then everyone would know about this as a possibility when entering. 

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Although the notice of race prevents a simple reschedule (which I completely agree with as people make plans based on NOR) it doesn’t mean there aren’t other possibilities….

The final race could be rescheduled but not count towards the series?  Many of the competitors just love the racing (and the last/shortest race is often the most popular) so if rescheduled could just be a standalone race with prizes accordingly. I don’t think anyone would hold it against SSANZ if this happened and didn’t affect series scores. I know several competitors felt short changed last year by losing a race and would be annoyed if it happened again.

Secondly, now that two years in a row have either lost a race or looking like a distinct possibility… maybe it’s time to add a reserve date or options into the NOR next year? 

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SSANZ Lewmar Triple Series Race 3

SSANZ is as keen as mustard to run the third race and hope to do so on the 4th September. We can only run the race if we are at Level 1 or Level 2. 

SSANZ will actively monitor the situation and are considering our options in the event that we can not run the race as planned. More information will be provided once the current COVID-19 situation becomes clearer.

In the mean time stay safe and we will be in touch.

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