BURNSCO SPRING SERIES Wednesday 27th November

Another breezy SW evening, a little less this week at 22-25 knots.
Crew:- Kev, Knoxy, Steve, Aaron, Jenna, Alix, Matt, Holly, Charlie.

This week we reefed the main pre start, last week we kept full main for the run up the Bolder Bank, reefing for the on wind leg back but lost too much while reefing.
From the start it was on, hard on the wind off the line, 5 of us in a line trying to climb over each other, McLeod and Blackout to weather of us, Redline, Wild Thing, to leeward, Future Feedback astern to leeward.
With a strong outgoing tide, I decided to have a go a laying the harbour entrance early, tacked onto port, cleared the sterns of McLeod and Blackout,and started gaining all the height we could.
Some shouting behind caught our attention, Redline had Wild Thing, McLeod and Blackout in his sights, the three had overlaid as we had just proved, but Redline wasn't looking for the layline, he wanted blood, Wild Thing was head to wind but no were to go, as McLeod with Blackout above charged on. Nice not to be in that battle.
The early tack had us out the entrance and on our way to the approach beacon in 1st place, the next 4 boats still sorting themselves out after their wee incident in the entrance,

At the Approach Beacon the breeze was around the 25-27 knots with some west in it so I had decided to go for the gennaka, but once on deck it was discovered it hadn't been packed. NO!
Fractional kite then? by the time they were changed we were around the Beacon heading for Boulder north, Blackout had popped a gennaka and was flying at us, they are certainly sailing well.

This wasn't a great sight from the other side either as Blackout runs us down

Finally we had a hoist and started to at least hold Blackout, now further out to sea, as we run flat to Bolder North.

Blackout dropped their gennaka before the gybe, 2 sail reaching at us on starboard, rounding only 20-30 metres ahead, Mcleod hadn't flown a kite but were 3rd round followed by Redline , Wild Thing and Future Feedback

 Wild Thing (Young 8.4) photo from Future Feedback

We were slowly making inroads on Blackout, managing to climb off him a little, but 15 minutes into the beat out to the Cardinal Mark and the breeze dropped down to 18 - 20 knots, Blackout was now quicker and we were loosing ground, we shook out the reef, which helped but we had lost some more shacking it out, and weren't making anything on them, behind McLeod was closing.

Some Division 2 traffic at the Cardinal didn't do us any favours, more ground was lost.

A tight 2 sail reach back to the entrance, McLeod was closing all the time, we were now in blocking mode forcing them below us, and bugger me they slowly moved through us, we popped the gennaka for the turn to the finish, finishing 3rd, 2 min 20 sec behind Blackout, who had sailed a faultless race, we were only 40 sec behind McLeod.

Handicaps 1st McLeod, 2nd Redline, 3rd Clear Vision
We are 2nd overall in the series with 2 to go, Redline with too many points in 1st to catch, Blackout and Future Feedback only a couple of points behind us, so a 3 way race for 2nd Overall.

AIMEX TIME TRIALS ON SUNDAY - Launch & Yachts under motor