On Sunday we welcomed back Rick Marsden on Mongoose, and Steve Brooks sailing the re-badged Hobie 14 Dave. The first race was a figure-of-eight course in a SE breeze around 10 knots, and it developed into two contests within the one race. Mongoose and Knockout (Rob Currall) chased each other around the course, with Mongoose gaining time at the marks and on the reaches, while Knockout caught up and passed on the upwind working legs. In the closing stages Knockoutlost a rudder and Mongoose broke her tiller extension, and they limped over the line in that order. The other contest was between Dave and Tradewind (Allan Rees and Dave Gibson), who also exchanged places a couple of times but didn’t break anything. In the end, Tradewind prevailed by a couple of minutes in a time which, after correcting for the boats’ yardsticks, gave her the win over Knockout and Mongoose.
The same pattern developed in the second race, except that latecomer Thomas Schild in Obnoxious joined the second group, making it an entertaining threesome. Obnoxious was the fastest of the three, but tended to succumb to mishaps which would let Tradewind pass and Dave to nearly catch up. Only on the final lap did Obnoxious pull away and hold her lead over Tradewind. The battle up front was even closer than the first race, with the lead changing half-a-dozen times before Knockout edged out Mongoose by only two seconds. However this time the faster pair did enough to take the race on corrected time.
Summary results were:
Race 1 on Yardstick: (1) Tradewind (2) Knockout (3) Mongoose
Race 1 on Performance Handicap: (1) Knockout (2) Mongoose (3) Dave
Race 2 on Yardstick: (1) Knockout (2) Mongoose(3) Tradewind
Race 2 on Performance Handicap: (1) Knockout (2) Mongoose (3) Tradewind
Racing now goes into the Christmas break, giving the sailors five weeks to fix their boats properly. First racing day in the New Year will be Sunday 28 January; for the full schedule see website http://www.bbsc.org.au/Links-&-Downloads.
Above; Sailors in festive mood – but where are the Santa Hats ??
Above: Knockout chases Mongoose around the bottom mark. Knockout subsequently passed, and took line honours by two seconds.
