We don't normally write about a series win -- but this time the last race had an eventful start, and there's a great bit of video from the final downwind leg that needed a few words to go with it ...
This was the final race of RPNYC Autumn Series; CV won Division 1 with a clean sweep of PHRF, IRC and Club handicaps.
We got out on the race course, and were getting set up when we broke a jib car, less than half an hour before the gun. Went to find the spare which we 'never' take off the boat, but none of us could find it. So we went to rig something else - nothing suitable. We guessed that if we phoned Barton Marine (www.bartonmarine.co.nz/) Mike's guys would help if they could -- and they did... Ten minutes later, in 20 gusting 26 knots of wind we backed into the wharf outside Te Papa with the full main still up (no time to take it down and get to the start on time!), where after some fairly tricky boat handling a box of 'one of these is bound to fit' options was handed to us via a rope-lanyarded bucket from one of the Barton's team that had run half a mile from the shop to meet us with no notice at all. That's service. Then we scampered to the start line, approached from above the port end of the line about 20 seconds late with the Div 1 boats that had already started heading at us on starboard tack, dipped them and the line and started about a minute late.
Video is of CV storming into the final mark rounding , in 25 knots of nice warm northerly gusting to ~30 knots.
NB For the [other] technical purists: kite setup looks odd because the storm halyard had tangled at the top, so we had to fly our red 'Oxygen' storm kite from the fractional halyard
NB(2) Thanks Nigel Sharplin for the geat video, and Oxygen Property Management (www.oxygen.co.nz/) for the bright red kite.
NB(3) Yeeeeeha.
