BURNSCO SUMMER SERIES Race 8 Wed 18th

It all seemed too hard to go sailing Wed night, Old people need to rest? And I hadn't had much?
I had a ship to bring in at 1630, should be ok normally an hour to berth a ship, Steve and I could be picked up from the Tug at 1730 and be on the start at 1750. what a plan!
Only trouble it all took a little longer to berth the ship, we jumped onto C V from the tug as the 5 minute sounded, the main up at the 4 minute, jib up engine off and run to the line, 30 seconds late?
Not a lot different  to the past 3 weeks?
15 knot northerly though NICE.

Only 5 of us in Div 1, so out the entrance in 5th on the transom of Future Feedback, we got to number 1 beacon gaining speed after stalling on their stern, and shoved C V's bow up inside FF, however FF had gone high and we were both head to wind, only our bow was almost tapping on their starboard quarter while my starboard quarter was only 100 mm from the barnacle covered steel pile?
We both fell away to gain speed but we couldn't quite get high enough to clear our air, once out a wee way and enough water to the right we tacked onto port for clear air and out of the flood tide until we run out of water then back out on starboard to find we were well clear of Future Feedback and close to Wild Thing and Ballistic, a longer tack back in this time with Ballistic coming out on starboard, we were bow to bow, too big to dip so tack on their bow, beautiful tack to leeward, built speed then started to squeeze them up, they were forced to tack away onto port, we tacked back a little later for the long port tack to the top mark.

We had pulled back both Ballistic and Wild Thing, only Blackout ahead and to leeward about 250 metres away, we were slowly pulling them in, but out of no where they found a high mode? Slowly they came up from under us to lee bowing us? as we were close to the top we hung in on their hip then followed them in to the top mark.

We both had good hoists with no change down to Boulder middle although we had used our fractional for this short run to save a repack on the short up leg.
Around Boulder middle and only 2 boat lengths in it as we tacked away onto starboard, we were now in a bit of traffic as the Div 2 boats were also using the top mark and home, so managing slower traffic was going to be important.
We meet again at the top with about the same gap but we had to follow Blackout and Freerider into the mark.
Another good hoist, this time the heavy masthead kite, we had set above both boats, rolled over Freerider as they were still setting their kite, Blackout came high under gennaka across our bow, no good fighting as we would have trouble holding the masthead in a luffing match, so we run down flatter to the entrance using waves and pressure as mach as we could.

Blackout had run down under Zena, the Young 9.9, finding themselves trapped under them not able to break through, meanwhile we were picking our way through traffic best we could.
We opened up a good 500m ahead and to leeward which we held to the finish line.

!st on line, 1 minute ahead of Blackout in 2nd,Wild Thing 3rd 5 minutes behind, Future Feedback only 10 seconds behind Wild Thing.
A great race and another handicap win, we are now 9 points ahead of Future Feedback and Blackout both sharing 2nd overall. 2 more to go.