On Wednesday we returned to the water for the latest in the Puma Twilight series at RCYC. While we were away overseas Ian MacRobert from Southern Spars in Cape Town arranged for the fitment of an external doubler and new vang tang after we noticed some surface cracks on the underside of the boom. They did an excellent job, thanks guys. We also also changed our main sail with the return of our new Quantum Fusion main. We were all chomping at the bit having missed the previous two weeks races.
Racing took place in a Westerly, with a short port tack beat to #2 channel marker, a run down to Milnerton and a beat back to the finish leaving Woodbridge to starboard. Heidi timed the start well, starting at the pin end. We had Majimoto just to weather of us and it took us a little while to find our rhythm and sail through her lee. We slightly over stood the mark as we tended to follow the spinnaker class boats towards the #1 mark. Fortunately we looked behind us to see the competition bow down and heading for #2, so we cracked off and rounded the mark first, ahead of Maestro.
The wind had freshened, gusting 26 knots at the mark so we decided to change our code 2 for the code three jib on the run down to Milnerton. This was a bad move and ultimately cost us the race as we lost time changing sails. With the starboard jib halyard attached to the sail in the port luff groove, we had to sail without a headsail for a minute or two.
Once around Milnerton, we set off towards Woodbridge. As always the mark proved to be notoriously difficult to spot and we sailed too low, leaving it further to starboard than we needed to. This cost us a little more time. Once clear of Woodbridge, we found a bit of rhythm with the helm, main and jib trimmers working well to get us to the line quickly.
The spinnaker and non-spinnaker classes converged on the mark making the race officer's job a nightmare. Initially they scored two of the spinnaker class boats in the non-spinnaker division, giving us a fifth on corrected time. However this was rectified and we finished third on corrected time just 3 seconds behind Rockstar and 1min 20sec behind AL. We were bit rusty on the day and it cost us. The forecast for next week is a more conventional 20 knot SE. Can't wait! On the boat were Elmarie, Charlotte (on debut), Amanda, Laurence, Theo, Bea, Dickie, Werner, Jan, Sean, Heidi and Michael.
