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B&G Simrad 100


TimW

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Better late than never....

 

PROMISE SSANZ100 Race Report

 

It had been a hectic week of juggling work and family to get the boat ready. All set by Friday except for replacing the mainsail batten we threw gybing around navy in the 60. Down at the boat Fri night to fit it and found it was too short and all the shops were shut...Fortunately there are several Stewarts on F1 so I hoisted the jolly roger and went and pilfered one from a boat I knew wasnt sailing. Thanks Bill. All set. Sat morning arrives, Up at 6, to the supermarket by 7am. Grab the usual food and drink to get through the day and arrived to find my islander mate putting the strings on.

 

Pushing tide motoring to the start, we arrive at the pin end of the line at 3 minutes to our start, (yes, motor was off at the 4 Rosser), damn, wanted the other end, cant get there, OK lets go, so we crossed the line a few seconds late towards the pin end. Sunstone and Revolution were just to weather of us and the rest of the fleet were up at the boat end. Can we tack? Nope, not without dipping everyone. OK will have to put up with what we have, we sail fast and get to the beach. extending on the two boats near us but losing weather ground. First tack we just clear Sunstone. The Farr (revolution) had stepped out a little as expected. We work the shore and at our first tack out we see Pahi about half a km in front already. Its not a Stewart, its a rocket ship! About halfway between them and us is Hard Labour, another boat that is sailed far too well...Little did we know but thats how the line results were going to go....

 

Had some close racing with Sunstone and Pelagian up the coast, The shore seemed to be paying with the breeze at the top of the range for a number two headsail. Put in a long board into Tiri channel. We nailed the lay-line past the reef that sticks out off Whangaparoa. Breeze building and Sunstone were putting weather ground on us. We put a tuck in the main and sorted that, got maybe half a knot of boatspeed and ten degrees of height. Two more tacks to get passed Motuora where House of Elliot sneaked up inside of us. Two sailed to Flat Rock in building breeze and seas. Lumpy as by the time we got to Flat. We were maybe 20 minutes behind Pahi and could just make out their white spinnaker in the distance. Hard Labour were struggling to set their little blue kite. We opted to two sail and go wave hunting. So out into the gulf we went. 45 degrees off course and then bear away as the stern is lifted and the bow goes down, up she comes and we are launched down the face, yeee haaaa this is why i love these longer races, surfing. The wind and seas were building, we were getting some huge rides, sustained blasts of 16 and 18 knots at times. Got a max of 20kn on the GPS. Reefed main and a number two headsail. Never even looked like broaching, had to hang on and concentrate but what a blast.

 

After some time, I said we have to come down, we are going the wrong way. So I gybed the main (crash!) and goose-winged the number two. F#$% me what a ride! Dead downhill in those big steep waves, Bow goes down buried to the sheer, water peeling off past the shrouds and then up she pops and away we go. Didnt dare lose focus for a second...Thankfully S34s are so full in the bow. I was wedged in the cockpit, white knuckles around the tiller. I looked back at my mate and he is clutching the backstay with a huge grin and bulging eyes! After several minutes (no idea how long really) of screaming down the building seas, pointing at the approaching frontal cloud, Steve says 'thats black, do you reckon its rain or wind?' I say probably both, we gotta get rid of this, meaning the headsail. No argument there. I cautiously hand over the helm as we skate down yet another wave, go forward and throw the halyard as I go past the mast. I spent the next several minutes getting the sail below (again no idea how long it really took). I hear a manic laugh coming from the cockpit with the wash off the bow going past the shrouds at waist height to discover we get an 18.5kn on the GPS with me on the bow and only a reefed main in the sky. Just as I get back to the cockpit the rain came, holy buckets! within a few minutes we were both soaked to the skin....The front went through surprisingly quickly. The rain killed the waves and the wind. The breeze swung west and we put up the number 3 headsail. Since the waves had dropped so had our speed. We hoisted the number 2 spinnaker for the run down to Shag which was pretty much square and uneventful compared to the last few hours!

 

The breeze dropped as expected behind Waiheke, we shook out the reef, passed the Farr, dropped the kite in the lee of Shag and rounded in the company of a couple of Young 88s and that had caught us in the lighter airs. Back on the wind up the front of Waiheke. A big long lay, no-one passed us but we could see red and green lights getting closer. Breeze knocking as we got towards the Motuihe end of Waiheke, we tacked and headed towards the Haystack, nailed the layline (again) across the top of Rakino when we tacked back. Crossed the line and pulled in the fishing lure just after 11pm. Back to the dock for the obligatory bacon and egg rolls, rum and debrief.

A quick race, max fun in the waves, thanks to SSANZ and all for running such a great event (again), a good call to run with the number two course for the Shorthaul. Still buzzing.

 

Brett

Promise.

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where did infiltrator pull the pin?

 

Around the Noises. My crew was feeling crook and we decided it wasn't the race to try and do without us both feeling fit and healthy. We were surprised that we were still pretty close to Crocodile leading up to Tiri, but by the time we turned the corner you were all specks in the distance. We didn't want to put any bigger sails up because it was a handful enough with that wave angle and our speed didn't increase much, so we were never going to catch up.

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The (even later) Cool Change Report

Another great series organised by SSANZ. What would we do without the perseverance of the organisers. We were all good for the start. Clean bottom, a crew member with a windex stab wound in his left hand and skipper who could barely move his head. I’d made my famous twelve pack of ham sandwiches and all of the water was bailed from the interior. I hate starting in a wet boat. It gets that way soon enough. Nice coffee to start the morning and a quick motor down to the start line. After practising with the number 2 last Sunday we decided that it would be the sail that we would start the race with. Good choice overall. We made a terrible start getting pushed up at the pin end and having to tack away. Not great but we tacked back and headed up the channel. Stayed on the bays side all of the way up heading out into the Tiri Channel after the tide slacked a little. Two’s Company and Squid V were ahead and further out towards the Rangi side. As we headed up towards the Tiri Passage we started to think about a reef and tucked it in mid-channel. Boat felt much more comfortable and we were laying through to Motuora. Once we put the reef in we started to make ground on the Bump and Grind and were way higher. They started to haul us in while I was attending to the reef. Two’s Company led us around by 100 metres or so and then they seemed to find another gear on the way to Flat Rock. We were lower than we should have been when going into Flat Rock and under-estimated the building sea state. Some really big stuff, and very close together. Pretty scary moment. Once around we left the reef in and ran away with the number 2. We had some good bursts with the GPS registering a top speed of 15.3 knots. One of the Stewarts in front of us popped a kite and took off (for a while) then wrapped it around the forestay in one of the gusts. Then the westerly came! I wished we had gybed when we first saw the signs however a granny gybe saw us back on course. The rain was amazing and really knocked back the sea surface state. As soon as the maelstrom passed we hauled out the reef, popped the gennie and headed to Tarahiki. A nice run with no dramas. Probably could have easily carried the m/head. The beat home was fairly uneventful although there was some steep little chop coming through every now and then. We had a couple of real slams which to our amazement turned on all of the switches on the board. Made the south end of Rakino on one board, a few stabs to get up and across the top and a tight reach home. Seemed pretty uneventful. The down pour on the finish line was just a reminder of what was about. I really enjoy this series and wasn’t disappointed. We just have to push harder. Looking forward to White Island and the Three Kings Races over summer.

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Well done to all the guys who completed the race.

Had to make a decision on which fleet to shoot so went Long Haul....

Sorry S/Haul guys but no way my knees could handle getting over to you lot.

Great images none the less and thanks Psychic for the beers :-)

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Nah jus picked up their Life Buoy and light out of the water then Bashed to weather for 1/4 mile to give it back to them ;-) never a dull moment.....knees still recovering from the beating!

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THE SIMRAD

from the other side of the fence.

After competing in just about every SSANZ race since 2006 including 2 round North Island and the round New Zealand Jon and I decided to take a break from the Simrad this year. As Jon is part of the SSANZ committee he had volunteered to be part of the start/finish crew and when he asked if I would like to join them I thought, what the hell, it’s got to be easy compared to doing the race, so I joined the team.

I live in Hamilton, keep my yacht in Pine Harbour and we have to be at Westhaven at 0715 to get out to the start line for the start of the Simrad 50. So there are two choices, leave home about 0530 Saturday morning or go up to Pine Harbour Friday night and head off to Westhaven around 0630. Simple choice really, a couple of pints with Jon and Mike off Northbound on Friday night and we are on the road by 0610 next morning, I mean we have heard all about this Auckland traffic so we figured we had better give ourselves a bit of extra time. Now we know the Auckland traffic isn’t that bad early morning on weekends and we are waiting around Westhaven well before 0700.

I was Commodore of the Waikato Yacht Squadron for three years and have been start boat heaps of times before this so when Steve said can you look after the radio and check the boats in I said “No problem”. The races I ran for the Waikato boys were usually around ten to twenty boats in one start, now I’ve got 150 boats, all wanting to call in at the same time, half of them with names I can’t pronounce let alone spell. Jaz knocked off doing breakfast for us and rescued me from my panic by checking off the names on the master sheet which left me with the far easier job of just replying as each yacht called in. I made a mental note, that if I am invited back; to make sure I am nowhere near that radio next time.

By 1000 all the boats are under way and we are on our way back to Westhaven with the job of checking off and phoning all those boats that didn’t check in at the start. This is another part of the organization, as a competitor, I had given no thought at all. The amount of time the committee put into checking everyone is accounted for was impressive and just how much could be saved by letting the committee know you are not going to front for the race is once again something I had never given a thought.

By 1400hrs we are back on Moody Blue and on our way out to the finish line. Once again I am into a big learning curve. Things like how hard it is to read a yachts name when they are coming straight towards you, especially when they are coming in up to six at a time. The next best thing to use to identify each boat is the sail No, so those of us on deck are trying to read the number pass it onto the below deck team who have to record the time as we signal each boat over the line. In amongst all this as each yacht is recognized the team has to sort out which one is the leader in each division so they get the gun rather than the hooter.

All this is hard enough but when night starts to take over, reading sail numbers gets to be a real pain especially those dirty brown sails with black numbers on them and the spinnakers with missing digits or no numbers at all.

By 1930hrs its all over. Steve has been it touch with coastguard to sort out anyone who has withdrawn that we haven’t caught and make sure all the boats are accounted for. The boys on the computers have all the results sorted and we are Westhavern bound discussing who will be available for the next race.

The next two races have all the same dramas, any one of which you could write a book about. Some of the stand outs for me are, Seeing Timber wolf through a mist of bow wave that seemed to fly to half mast height screaming toward the finish line half an hour after calling to say he was an hour out and us still sitting in Orakei and Steve getting the coastguard, who just happened to be there, to run him out to the finish in time to take their finish time. The fact that Russell went to all the trouble of bringing his multi from Gulf harbour for the last two races to be used as the start boat and then when the last boat finished at 0333hrs on Sunday he had to head all the way back again. The last thing was listening to all those skippers withdrawing from the last race and thinking perhaps yachting will lead the way back to common sense where people take responsibility for their own safety rather than expecting every decision on safety to be made for them then complaining when they break something because the race was too hard.

Thanks for the experience SSANZ

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Its great to hear it from another perspective, alot of stuff I didn't even think about there.

I have the upmost respect for the SSANZ team and what they do, after seeing it with the RNI and 10+ years of simrad series I think they do such a great job.

Thanks GreeneO for doing your part on the water and writing the report.

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Post of the Year nomination there from Greeno! Bravo - for the work volunteering, and for the post. Easily a hall of fame post that one.

 

Please PM me your address mate... I'd like to send you a token of my appreciation for your input into supporting the sport.

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Quite a while back I decided that CREW was getting too much like talk back radio so I drifted away. Just lately I came back and posted my thoughts on this Simrad series. I really didn’t expect the great response I received from that post and then at the SSANZ prize giving someone suggests I should get a prize for my story, so I leave with a $150 voucher from Chains Ropes & Anchors. Now, when I get home from work tonight, there is a courier package from Kiwi-Bardy with some Super Liquor gift vouchers and a thank you note in it and I really don’t think I did that much. But I will top up the rum supply and get a new anchor chain so if you see Hot Shot anchored in the Gulf over the summer come and share the spoils. GOD KIWI YACHTIES ARE GOOD BUGGERS

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Quite a while back I decided that CREW was getting too much like talk back radio so I drifted away. Just lately I came back and posted my thoughts on this Simrad series. I really didn’t expect the great response I received from that post and then at the SSANZ prize giving someone suggests I should get a prize for my story, so I leave with a $150 voucher from Chains Ropes & Anchors. Now, when I get home from work tonight, there is a courier package from Kiwi-Bardy with some Super Liquor gift vouchers and a thank you note in it and I really don’t think I did that much. But I will top up the rum supply and get a new anchor chain so if you see Hot Shot anchored in the Gulf over the summer come and share the spoils. GOD KIWI YACHTIES ARE GOOD BUGGERS

 

Excellent!! Good on everyone involved.. :clap: :clap: :clap: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

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