Simrad 100: Dynamo?s Day

The day looked really promising. It looked like there might actually be some breeze and no rain, a great day for a sail. The start approached and up went the number one, however somehow during the set up the stopper knots on the genoa sheets had been missed and they immediately un-ran themselves. So there I was two minutes to go comically on the bow trying to grab hold of and re-run these lines while they flailed around in mid-air trying to knock me off my perch.  Got sorted, sheeted-on, somewhere near the line at the wharf end, just in time for the gun and in clear air. A cock-up start that ended up being quite reasonable really. Then kite up, a couple of gybes to clear north head and on up the channel. Once past Rangi we gybed out to the east with Mindbender and Sweeney gybing back to lay Little Barrier and passing outside Tiri. An awesome run into Little Barrier. The waves seemed quite small but we were able to catch them for prolonged bursts of speed, a very quick and very comfortable ride. By 3pm we were closing in on Little Barrier! As we all came together we had Waka Huia, Legless and Lynchmob on our inside, Mindbender directly in front and Triple 8 on our outside. Triple 8 were running a kind of three sail set-up with spinnaker, main and some sort of small staysail inside the kite (note to self: check class rules, is this allowed?). Having been around the island a few times in the dark it was neat to get a close up look at this Jurassic Park in the daylight, all big cliffs and dense bush, very spectacular.

Around the back of Little Barrier the breeze came on as we headed up into the wind so down with the kite just in time for it to die off altogether. Sailed and stopped through holes and light zephyrs in the wind shadow of the island for half and hour or so then back on the wind for the trip home. Clear of Little Barrier by about 4pm. Beat out to the South east-ish then tacked back onto a line towards Flat Rock. Wind was in the mid-20s with gusts into the high 20s and the sea was lumpy and short. A wee bit over powered two-up with the number #1 and full main but we stuck with it as all the forecasts were for the wind to lighten and go more to east. Bash, crash, crash, bash, wave-crest in the face, crash, bash, previously neatly stowed items all over cabin floor but for all that we were moving pretty quickly. Near Flat Rock we tacked again and headed down the outside of Tiri till we were able to lay the North Shore suburbs. Tacked and followed the breeze as it lifted us but lightened off all the way to Rangi light where park-up #1 happened. Crawled our way forwards, reversed in the tide a bit, crawled forwards again, slowly accelerated until a nice 10knots came in and we were off once more. Flying down the channel doing 6-ish knots in flat water, laughing and thinking we were half an hour away we called SSANZ to say we were nearly there, how wrong we were. Passed North Head (first time) then hit the zero knots wind zone, stopped and the tide reversed us back passed North Head (second time), got some way on again and ghosted passed North Head (third time) then back (forth time). Eventually we hooked into a thin line of breeze and for the fifth and final time we passed North Head. Our breeze line took us around the back of a lot of parked boats and over toward the Tamaki Yacht club where we joined an ever growing fleet of boats from both Shorthaul and Longhaul races. Played bumper boats and raft-up until we eventually maneuvered ourselves to the far end of the crowd and crossed the line next to the wharf alongside Sweeney Todd and in a dead heat with about 40 other boats.

An excellent day and big thanks to SSANZ for a great series and we?ll be back.