A very light sou’westerly breeze saw a less than exciting start to the final OPS race of the summer pointscore, as 26 yachts crossed the Harbour start line on Saturday morning with kites hoisted.
On Warwick Sherman’s Occasional Course Language, our slightly late start at the pin end with our A1 committed us early to the western side of the harbour, where in effect the bulk of the fleet ended up. Our nemesis, About Time, however, stuck with the eastern channel and after a frustrating hour of ghosting up the Harbour, we effectively restarted at the Heads just as the sou’easter kicked in at about 8 knots. Even the big boats, Vanguard, Future Shock and Broomstick were with us as we headed out to sea.
The breeze built slowly through the day as the cloud cleared, bringing a sparkling late summer day, with a predominantly south easterly wind direction. Most of the yachts elected to fly a tight spinnaker or asymmetric sail, with white being the favoured colour. The result was 26 yachts strung out along the northern beaches coastline like pearls in the glittering sun.
By early afternoon, the bulk of the fleet was off the central coast. On OCL we were cruising comfortably under our A3 at around 8-9 knots ahead of a 12 knot breeze, sitting on the rail, regularly changing trimmers, grinders and helm. The breeze remained stubbornly below 15 knots, and pushed forward in the lulls, making the reach tighter and tighter as the afternoon wore on.
On OCL, we watched the inshore boats with keen interest, as we sat about four miles offshore, not quite the furthest out. We knew they would need to lose their shy kites before we did and just wondered if we could maintain the additional speed required as they worked out from the shore. We concentrated on Blackadder and About Time, as while we all have differing handicaps, we benchmark each other, all being Cookson 12’s. We knew we had seen off the Sydney 38 Love Byte, and our favourite rivals MRZ, so the important thing was to catch our sister ships.
Shortly after, we saw About Time drop their spinnaker and start to work out from shore and at that point we had a blow out in our spinnaker sheet with the casing splitting, causing an ugly mess and potential issue on the winch. Some fast thinking and great crew work saw the broken sheet replaced with the lazy sheet in quick time, and we lost very little speed during the changeover.
About 13 miles out from the breakwater, About Time was a mile to windward and a mile ahead, and Blackadder was still inside us. We were seeing up to 14 kts of wind speed now and had hit our day’s record of 10.9 kts. We had initially been gaining on About Time, but now they seemed to pull away from us, as we persevered with our A3.
As we approached Nobby’s Head, the decision was made to prepare a symmetrical kite for the run from the breakwater up to the finish line, and to prepare for a gybe set. However, the approach to the breakwater proved to be a bigger angle than we expected and we later realised that we should have set the symmetrical kite on starboard and gybed into the river.
The tight procession of yachts up the Hunter River as the sun started to set, cast a golden glow on the full spinnakers and must have been a glorious sight for shore based spectators. It was quite thrilling for us as competitors, as we rarely finish in such style and in such close quarters. It was also a joy for the Cookson 12 “team” to again finish in close proximity, given the distance covered that day.
That night some partied a little harder than others, and on OCL there was a great deal of sleeping late on Sunday morning. We set off for the long stint home initially under power, however by about 2pm we were able to hoist the sails and turn off the engine, and we even managed to fly a kite in through Sydney Heads and down the Harbour. Arriving back at the CYCA at about 5pm, we all agreed that it had been a really enjoyable weekend and that there really should be more races to Newcastle! – Sarah Goddard Jones
