From rainy skies to a beautiful sailing day on Lake Illawarra it just goes to show that its usually worth making the effort to turn up at the club regardless of what the weather is you are getting at home.
We had another good role up of TYs for today’s race. Four starters, Momentum with Barry Ray, John and Bruce aboard, Serenity with Wayne, Daniel, Richard L and Coby aboard, Rosstered Off with Jim, Richard H, Shaun and someone else who’s name I don’t have aboard, and Froufrou with Jess, Alen, Stephen and me aboard. We made up a good proportion of the Lord Mayors Regatta Saturday race fleet.
From my point of view what was encouraging to see on the water for this regatta was the return of some of the smaller TYs sailing out of the IYC. There must be many TYs falling into disrepair in back yards around the Illawarra. It’s a great shame. If I had some amazing entrepreneurial talent I would use it to encourage the owners of TYs being covered in bird poop and dust in their back yards to join our club, start using them again like they should be used and share in some rewarding on and off the water experiences.
The breeze was quite tricky swinging from north to east and gusting to around 15 knots meaning that it presented opportunities for making good choices (or not so good choices) up the works and at the jibe mark. With the shifting breeze tending east in the second half of the race made it challenging up the works and for carry a spinnaker around the jib mark. Many boats opted for a two-sail reach from the jibe mark to the upwind rounding mark. The boats brave enough to give the spinnaker a go on this leg gave us non-spinnakering boats some interesting entertainment with a couple of craft coming a cropper, notably a flattened Masrm that took a long time to get her mast vertical again.
The shortish Saturday race Olympic Triangle course didn’t allow the quicker boats, Rosstered Off and Momentum, an opportunity to stretch their legs and get away from the rest of the fleet but they still looked like they were having a good race at the front.
Never the less it was another great day out on the water and I believe everyone that made the effort enjoyed the experience.
BOAT NAME CORRECTED TIME PBH PLACE PBH CORRECTED TIME CBH PLACE
ROSSTERED OFF 63.880 4 61.719 2
MOMENTUM 62.747 3 62.169 3
FROU FROU 61.408 1 61.408 1
SERENITY 61.552 2 63.280 4
Next weekend is a big weekend for the TY’s, running the Kembla Klassic. In advance, I would like to thank all of you TY sailors for contributing your valuable time for making this another great event for our Off the Beach sailing colleagues. Thank you.
The end Trev