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B&G Simrad 60 2012


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Col has pretty much covered our race on the quarter pint. Prett happy but we should have kept kite up for a while longer, dropped then gybed and set gennaker versus rehoisting. Hindisght is 20/20!

 

Josh.. Great report but believe there are some night classes covering paragraphs, indent and formatting!

 

Looking very forward to next race of the series....

 

Nathan

Quarter Pint

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Wow what a ride on PB. Made up for race 1. Shocking start, miles off the line, thankfully its 40+ miles to make that up. Great beat upwind all the way to Gannet. Townsons love that stuff. First round in our division and caught quite a few of those who started ahead of us. Up with the kite for only the second time in a race. Great ride though to Rakino with the dolphins visiting. Peaking out in the high 9's. Turned the corner at Rakino with a building breeze and powered off towards the east coast bays working out when and how to gybe the yellow monster in this, surfing regularly up into the mid 11's. Saw a bit of carnage behind. Red spinnaker having a few issues. Someone with a green spinnaker (Faster Coyote?) dropped and seemed to head upwind for a bit before relauching and flying down the Rangi coastline. Gybed okay and didn't lose it completely, smoked up to 13.2 (okay this is relative to others here!!) for a new top speed. Felt like the volvo at times with the white moustache off the bow. Thought if thats our speed what the hell is it blowing and found out Tiri was 33 and 37. hmm maybe not such a great idea having the kite up in this!! got very close to a broach at one stage and just managed to get it back on track. Watched those ahead get headed with the easterly change and dropped before we got to that. lost a bit of time untangling everything to get the headsail back up for the leisurely ride to the finish.

 

All in all a great time though feeling battered and bruised today. Absolutely stoked to get 2nd on line and handicap. Learnt a lot more about sailing with a kite ie maybe don't put it up with its blowing that much!!

 

Thanks to SSANZ for another great race and roll on the next one.

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Simrad 60 on the Rattle n Rum.

We got off to an ok start mid line but quickly got rolled by the bigger boats and spent the first 15minutes trying to keep our air clear and get going. Marshy on the mercenary got the first cross on us but luckily that was to be the last time they were ahead. Slowly we found our groove and started to hold our own a bit better. Its always depressing doing upwind starts when you are one of the small boats(with the highest handicap!) in the fleet and a real downhill and light airs flyer and we knew we would have to work and hike hard to stay in touch with our division.

We worked the Rangi and Motutapu shore to avoid the tide, there wasn’t much flow but enough to make a difference. Battling it out with a bunch of Y88s, Squid vicious, bump n grind, fast company and cool change, I was pretty happy to be hanging in as we were. The only boat that had really got away from us was the Pepe who were long gone.

My original game plan was to go right, and work the Waiheke shore but with the breeze the most right(east) that I thought it would be all day, we were going to have to go across on a bad header so we opted to carry on north and wait for the breeze to shift slightly more north. This never really happened and we eventually had to tack back on an average heading. There had been a big split in the fleet with cool change, TREX and a few others splitting right as per my original gameplan and then bump n grind, us, fast company, squid vicious and a few others much further out off shore. We were happy with how we had done on the boats around us but were seriously concerned about the boats to the working the Waiheke shore. Luckily for us we got a small favourable shift to the north and managed to cross well ahead of cool change which was the lead boat out of the right hand bunch. This put us in really good shape with just Pepe, fast company and the entertainer ahead of us on the water so we just dug it in and worked as hard as we could to keep going fast. Coming into gannet rock bump n grind came in from way offshore to close the gap up quite a lot, it was quite lumpy and probably up to 20kts of wind at this stage. We just snuck ahead of the entertainer and rounded in 3rd spot with Pepe a long way ahead and just a few minutes behind fast company. I would say we were about mid fleet with the Y88s which started with us but were in another division.

We hoisted the masthead gennaker (after the entertainer graciously headed down to let us hoist-thank you) but it caught on the jib batten and tore on the luff. It was a bit tight for that sail anyway so we decided to peel to the fractional gennaker so we didn’t blow the masthead out as we might need it later. The fractional actually worked pretty well and we sent it pretty hard down to Navy Bouy passing a huge number of boats in the process. It gradually got windier as we came into tiri passage and we were sitting on 12-16kts, comfortable but just starting to get a handful. At this stage I was regretting just being in my shorts as there was a bit of water over the deck but the chances of me being able to put any more gear on were slim to none, my boots were full of water anyway. We pulled off a glamour gybe at navy bouy and caught a huge wave surfing down it at 18kts. This leg seemed slightly tighter or it could have been that the breeze was up to 25-30kts and we were well low on course but hauling ass. We could now see Pepe (for the first time since about motuhie passage) and they were just 2 sail reaching, and going a lot slower than us. The waves were really starting to build now and we were regularly surfing up to 18-20kts boatspeed and just loving it, we only did one small skid when I was really trying to push the height, if you don’t know he limits then you are not pushing it hard enough! It was only a minor one and just a quick flap of the kite and we were off again at 18kts. It was magic sailing and we really were flying. After blasting through to leeward of 2 Elliott 1050s, then hard labour at pace we eventually sailed through to leeward of Pepe to take the lead on the water for the first time in the race. Unfortunately we were not going to lay north head with the gennaker up and had to drop the gennaker at about Takapuna and 2 sail reach to the finish, Pepe with its extra 4 ft of waterline slowly overtook us again. We setup the fractional gennaker with the plan to hoist at north head and try to sneak past them but we decided it was probably not worth it, the gun would have only been a moral victory for us anyway as we give Pepe time on handicap so they would have beaten us anyway. We actually went as far as having the tack out on the end of the prod before we pulled the pin on it and decided the safer option was best.

The end result had us 25 seconds behind Pepe 16 minutes ahead of fast company and the next boat almost 40 minutes behind.

Well done to Pepe who again sailed a good race. I think they will be hard to beat in this series now with 2 double line and handicap wins.

I don’t think there was any more we could have done in that race, we sailed well upwind and hiked hard for the whole beat. Put up the big gear and sent it home. No downtime at all and some EPIC rides. The only downside of the day is that we really didn’t have much time for a beer during the race. We made up for it with a rum frenzy on the rattle with the mercenary, cosmic cruise and faster coyote crews.

Thanks to SSANZ for another great day on the water.

Josh

No problem Josh, we could see you had a bit on. We just wanted you to bugger off so we could have a beer :shock: We had a little work to be done with bolt cutters et al. and didn't eventually manage to get our sh#t together enough to get our kite up :(

Still, great day on the water thanks SSANZ

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Marshall Law's Simrad 60.

Got a shocking start probably 15-20 sec late over the line. Lucky for Mr. Roosevelt who barged the line nicely at the committee boat end, as he took the space where we should have been!! Got away cleanly though in reasonably clear air.

Tacked up the Rangi shore trying to keep out of the tide. Had a few crash tacks with other boats coming over on starboard.. Does anyone dip port boats in keeler racing? I was so surprised to have yachts calling us when we were only going to tack under them and lee bow them (which we did).. Oh well.

Not too bad speed and we crossed a few times with Whitebait, Mr. Roosevelt (who were loving the upwind stuff), Truxton (do they fight above their weight or what?), and Gale Force who were having a great race with good pace.

On one tack heading into Motutapu shore on starboard, we were converging with Outlaw, a Davidson 42 on port. We all made eye contact, so we thought "no worries" but they didn't bear away.... Gary my crew shouted a big "starboard" and at the same time they got a puff. I don't know why they didn't drop the main but they were about to come on board at cockpit level at 7 knots, so I luffed hard. They did the same, but we still had a good smack that took out the Port pushpit, and left a few scratches down the port side. We protested and heard they retired later. Insurance claims and repairs will be interesting, as we will be asking them to pay.

On up the beat to Waiheke and we went out into the tide on a good lift splitting from the fleet. This paid quite well and we made gains. We then went into Waiheke shore and made more gains crossing in front of Truxton and leaving the other 40 footers behind. We heard Satellite Spy started late but saw them come up through the fleet with better speed than us, going HARD into the North shore of Waiheke. We got knocked going into Waiheke so took a big tack out to sea in very lumpy stuff. BIG MISTAKE. I don't know if it was the sea state, tide, or wind curve inshore, but we got hammered, and rounded Gannet way behind Sat spy, Gale force and just behind Truxton.

The reach down to flat rock was beam to just forward of beam and we were being overpowered with full main and #3.Truxton tried a fractional Genniker and couldn't hold it. Not sure what they tried after that but it worked and they shot out from under us never to be seen again. Gale force also did well down here gaining a lot of ground on us.

For the short run down from flat rock we went with the fractional kite as we had 20-25 knots before we turned. Of course, this dropped further down the run... We should have gone masthead with Booboo's excellent new kite sock.. Just another bad call!!!

The hoist was slow and drop was worse (forgot about the mast halyard jammer :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: ) and that allowed Whitebait and a bendy boat 47.7, Notorious to catch us and pass us on the tight reach through to Tiri. Again we were.overpowered and reefed the main with no drop in boat speed. We had a few good surfs through the Tiri channel and caught Notorious. Once we changed angle and the wind built a bit the Marshall came into her own and we shook out the reef and took off. We passed Notorious and made good gains on Whitebait, but they sailed well. We had some good surfs topping out at 18 knots which was a blast. Could have had similar with the masthead on the run... :( :( :(

Coppelia were always close and actually were ahead of us at Gannet. They always sail well. They tried a 3/4 Genniker for a while on that last leg but dropped it and disappeared behind us in the gloom, along with .

Close to North Head in the dark and Whitebait did some strange manoeuvres allowing us to catch them up, and we finished a few minutes behind them.

 

In summary, we probably lost 30 min in mistakes with poor boat handling, but the tight reaches are hard work on the Marshall and she could do with a bit longer keel to stay powered up.

Downwind is another story but there wasn't enough of it. We both enjoyed the race hugely, learned a lot, and will try harder next time!! Thanks to Gary Koornneef, ex owner of Ross 40 Te Rauparaha for flying up from Wellington. We can only get better!! More downwind on the 100 please! :D :D

Photos show Gary wrangling an errant #4 on the foredeck, and the kite ride down from flat rock. See how far Whitebait and the Beneteau were behind us? One slow drop was all it took for them to catch us....

 

Thanks heaps to SSANZ and for waiting out in the rain for us to finish.

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Epic race on Fast Company too. Pretty much what booboo said, we lead R&R upwind but sat back and watched them fly on the reach to tiri. Tried to hang onto their wake by 3 sail reaching but happy that we were putting time on the rest of the fleet.

 

The ride from Tiri home was awesome, don't think we dropped below 10 knots, say on 11-12 most the way and maxed at 16.5.

 

Well done R&R, you guys sailed well. Not too worried about the other 930 competitor, I think quite a few boats witnessed their shortcut inside Iliomana beacon, but will leave that for the protest committee to decide (shame though as they were fast upwind and left us for dead)

 

I just read this now about Pepe going inside Iliomana. The way I see it is that it really didn't make a difference in the race. The 2 young fellas on there didn't know about the fairway markers. They sailed well and deserve their win.

I say just let it go. They have learnt their lesson.

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Surely Illiomoana has been a fairway mark for most races? Every race i can remember anyhow. and i wouldnt be too keen on sailing in there myself as an ex rock hopper i know what land feels like!

 

Surely their handicrap has to go up though hahaha

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I've enjoyed Pottblack and Candela's report so I'll add to the smallboat chatter...

 

Got in from Melbourne at 0100, at the boat at 0730. The preceeding week was challenging to say the least so it was good to make the race at all.

 

Start went well - only Bays Flyer higher up the pin end. It was a curiously mellow start with the others possibly shy after the SIMRAD50 clusterf**k start? Soon got into tacking up the Rangi coast and was happy to be hanging in with Pott Black, FX, Bays Flyer, Candela, and Faster Coyote, with the rest of the fleet a bit behind. Made it through Motuihe channel in good time and headed up the coast of Mototapu. The seastate was building with no increase in wind yet and as the #3 wasn't holding the boat speed anymore (evidenced by the fact that FC rolled us) we changed to the #2. We then decided to cross over to Waiheke a bit earlier than FC, worked the coast of Waiheke and caught a few of the sporties. Ended up rounding Gannet just after FC, with Pott Black, Bays Flyer and Candela already set and storming to Rakino.

 

It took a while to get the kite up but soon were off at 10+ knots north of D'Urville Rocks and back a bit slower to clear Marias and Zeno Rock. This bit was not as fast, around 9 knots, and I could feel the race slipping away even as we were passing Candela. After rounding Rakino the pace livened and we started to make gains of Bays Flyer and FX (FC had disappeared downwind by this point, once they got their big green what not up). Then the wind started to kick in and the ride got exciting, sitting on 12 and peaking out at 15 knots after a clean gybe before the lighthouse.

 

Forgive my stubby-leadmine sentimentality, but you know it's good when you drop down to 12 knots and everything feels all normal and slow and under control.

 

The angle was getting worse for extras tp North Head so we dropped the kite (which was trouble - another blown exit block, you reading this Grant? Time for a permanent solution!), two sailed for a bit, then got up the green jibtop. This sail usually is a sure sign the race is lost but every so often it pays off, and it did this time - keeping us just under 10 knots for the finish stretch, putting some time of FX, and getting close enough to Pott Black (who must have had a HELL of an upwind) to pip them by a few meagre seconds for the handicap win.

 

What fun! Big thanks to the foredeck for some heroics and keeping cheerful as I zombied through the upwind.

 

Postscript - anyone that races the RYC 9m-ish divisions knows that John from Crocodile sometimes makes his boat go go go, and while I was impressed by the early results that he had won the race by 11 minutes on line after having called in from Gannet 30 mins after us, I was not surprised. Alas I should have been as it seems they gave him an hour. Sorry JD, better luck next time :)

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Smithy, thanks for giving us room on the start. We were a little late to the line. What a great days sailing. Thanks to the SSANZ team for a well organised race and series.

 

The owner of Outlaw is indeed a good guy. I spoke to him on Sunday and he was very concerned about the dodgem incident. Pleased it will be sorted out in a friendly manner.

 

See you all for the next race :)

 

Cheers,

Team Roosevelt.

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“How do you feel about a gybe?” Normally this question wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, but today was different...

 

The start of the race didn’t go according to plan, we ended up being shut out at the boat end of the line, tacked early to clear our air, elected to carry on out to the right, sailed into more adverse tide, tacked back on a ugly heading, dummy tacked, spilt beer. If there was a menu of things that you could do wrong then I ordered two of everything to go.

 

Once clear of Rangitoto Johnny and I had settled down and got Moneyshot back into her upwind groove where we passed Moehau who had earlier crossed miles in front of us and back amongst the Trackers and Reactors. Quarter Pint and Rat Catcher were already a long way in front as all we could see of them was the sunlight glistening of their transoms!

 

We made the conservative call before the race to go with the number 2 headsail, which we suffered for early on in the race with the other Piedys running their number 1’s. Early on we struggled and Rat Catcher and Quarter Pint jumped out to a big lead early on and even though we tried hard to close the delta we never made an impression. There were some moments of joy as we passed Energy and Fine Entry as we closed in on Gannet, but I'm still unsure whether the number 2 was the right choice? It was disappointing that we had fallen so far back early on in the race and were having to play catch up from the get go, as we were looking forward to a closely fought battle around the course but the way Rat Catcher and Quarter Pint were sailing they were in a higher a gear and there would be no catching them!

 

We rounded Gannet in close company with Crocodile and China Doll and celebrated with a slick kite hoist and a brown fizzy sandwich. The feeling onboard at the time was we had been staring at Gannet Rock all day and that we wanted to get away from it as fast as we could. With a few extra knots of breeze and a couple of brewskis later we were approaching the northern end of Rakino surrounded by Spray, Dolphins, and a hungry Crocodile. We soon cleared the top of the island and saw Crocodile doing its best impression of a fish out of water lying on its side thrashing its tail hard, when a feeling of caution (or cold air) came over me and then.....WHAM! It was out turn.

 

Washing the windows of a Piedy is not to be advised at the best of times, but this gust felt like some heavy weight boxer throwing a haymaker had connected with Moneyshot and laid her out cold on the canvas, there was no getting up from this one I thought as Johnny leapt to the rescue by blowing the spinnaker halyard which got the brave little black Piedy to stagger back on to her feet and carry on fighting.

 

We re-hoisted the kite straight away and carried on our epic downhill slide, slaying into the backs of waves and leaving there remains in our wake. We got knocked down three more times, and we got back up three more times. Moneyshot was refusing to stay down! We were having a belter of a downwind send and the excitement was building to climactic levels when Johnny mentioned a few little words that turned the atmosphere of excitement into one of fear and loathing....

Johnny: “how do you feel about a gybe?”

Max: “Yep”

Johnny: “are you sure?”

Max: “what could possibly go wrong?”

Johnny: “how are we going to do this?”

Max: “I dont know.......

The boom slammed onto the starboard shrouds and Moneyshot wobbled to the left and then right as it continued to launch herself down the front of a big wave, Johnny vaulted onto the bow and wrestled with the pole as we slammed hard into the back of the next wave sending two walls of water high into the sky, it was like a scene out of the bible as we made eye contact for a single second the parrot beak went ‘click’ back on to the mast, the pole skied into the air I grabbed the downhaul and pulled hard to get the pole back down just as another big gust came through Johnny was back on the Kite sheets trimming hard and we were back in control? We had just pulled off the scariest gybe that I can remember.

 

We held on to the Black Kite for as long as we could before dropping just after Rangi Light and two sailing the last bit to the finish. We managed to reel in a bit of lost ground from Rat Catcher and Quarter Pint but they still finished 5 minutes in front of us in what was the best finish to a Simrad race that I can remember. The body was feeling the race still the next day, but so looking forward to the next one! Just got to work on the start before then!

 

:thumbup:

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So Mr Rosevelt wyh no kite from kawau to motuora? You guys where killing it to flat rock.

 

We were stoked with our result on truxton.

 

Had a mid fleet but deep start and got lucky to get some clear air heading to motuhi.

joined the food chain a bit later as the 40ft plus boats all steamed through and were very happy to still have a few big boats around us at gannet.

 

Coppelia were right there going well and gale force really put on the pace when they shook out there reef to be well in front of all of us at gannet.

 

Then reach to flat was a water line drag race and wasn't going that well for us so hoisted our flap flap and put the pace on for all of 2 mins before the tack line sh*t itself and we had to go back to 2sail. We were a bit low any way.

 

Mast head bag up at flat rock which blew out across the foot from the block patch to half way as it set (wtf) and the call was just dont collapse it and we will be sweet.

 

A dodgy gybe later and a very careful drop we had past mr rosevelt and caught satellite spy. a 2 sail to tiri as the breeze picked up a bit I was getting excited about the send in from tiri to the finish.

 

We reefed at tiri as we planned to put a kite up and relaunched the flap flap.

 

The next 40mins was" Real Good" and I will put a vid clip together this week. I even got busted on film doing a wipeout after which the camera got launched downstairs.

 

Next job. Find the camera.

 

Past outrageous fortune and finshed up just behind nosaka who had another blinder.

 

looking forward to some more spinaker sailing in the 100.

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Don't know how to put this without it sounding twisted, but has Outlaw changed hands in the last year or so?

 

Yep, new owner last season.

 

Thanks - sounds like she has found a good new home.

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So Mr Rosevelt wyh no kite from kawau to motuora? You guys where killing it to flat rock.

 

Hoisted the kite just after Flat Rock and ran flat off, but noticed we had run the brace inside the life lines and it was doing its best to bend the stanchion off the deck. In the process of trying to fix it we managed to release the pole from the sheet and the kite did a little dance around the forestay resulting in a nice twist which seemed to get worse the more we tried to fix it. Managed to get the kite down but took an age to tidy it all up so we could re-hoist. By that stage figured would be better to go back to headsail after a rest. Bit lazy really, but to finish first you must first finish....and we didn't want to tear the kite. Little embarrased about it, but got the result we needed anyway.

 

Great to see the Truxton steaming along under kite (hope the repair to the foot isn't a big deal) and then smoke off down hill after Whangaparoa.

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I hear that Pepe has withdrawn from the race. Big ups to them for kicking ass on the water and then graciously withdrawing when it was pointed out that they missed a fairway mark that really didn't make much (if any) difference to the overall result.

The 2 young lads (both working here at North Sails) were gutted but understood that a fairway mark is a mark of the course and they were not going to win a protest. Anyone know who actually protested?

I did point out to them that the 25 seconds they beat us by could have been because we actually went around the fairway mark so really we won- that didn't go down well...

Stupid mistake but they have taken it on board and will not do it again....

 

So I guess that gives us the double now, line and handicap win.

Good to know those little SR26's can go Ok in the breeze as well as the light airs!

Bloody Phenomenal little boats really and the Rattle is always so well prepared by Richie.

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Great writeup there Max, your making me miss my old bus! Go the little black Piedy! I love the way Piedys just drive through the waves like that.

 

Anyways, The Race from High'n'Fibre - A Vickers 7m Sportboat trying to pretend its a real boat!

 

We were a bit more organised that last race, having turning up before 5 minute gun and had the main all the way up this time! Got a good start and worked up the Rangi/Motatapu shoreline which let us hang onto our competition for a while. We were quite surprised that we were hanging onto a couple of SR's and 930s but eventually the chop/wind got too much for us and we started to loose contact. A reef helped but by Gannet we were last round the mark and had the small boats nipping at our heels.

 

Threw up the fractional reacher and took off for Navy buoy but she didn't quite take off as expected and turns out we were half full of water! We have some tubes running through the boat from gunnel to gunnel for the trapeze bungees (for sportboat mode) and these had come off with and had let in a lot of water for the second half of the beat and the auto bilge pump switch had died. Once the 3-400 litres were pumped out we were off and rapidly catching the fleet. The bilge pump pretty much stayed on for the rest of the days sailing as it was a wet, wild and fun ride!

 

Still last at Navy Buoy but only just behind the back markers, we two sailed it to Rangi light as we had more than enough power without the genny and had a great ride skidding along next to Lion NZ, who was roaring along. It was cool watching the old warhorse get out for a trot, and with the gloomy weather, made it feel very “Whitbread-ish,” however the volume of water flowing over the decks on High’n’Fibre was much more “Volvo Ocean Race!”

 

At Rangi light, up went the fractional genny again and we scorched over Cool Change, who hoisted theirs, and we both flew down towards Fort Takapuna. Both dropped and we managed to hold them off to the line. Unfortunately we were about 10-15min off the pace of the other small boats in our fleet (Erazer, Geralda, Abanito) who are the competition we want to beat. Hopefully next time we keep in contact with the competition but at least we kept in touch with the Race Committee this time and haven’t been protested!

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