Welcome to Yachting Girls

Welcome to a blog where the adventures of a team of crazy women who are mad about sailing can be shared.
We are living in the beautiful Huon Valley in Tasmania, surrounded by outstanding sailing waters.  In June 2007 my husband and I purchased a Columbia 27 cruising yacht.  My husband crews in a Top Hat 24 in the races held by the Port Cygnet Sailing Club so our yacht was going to sit idle for most of the sailing season.  A great idea came to us - lets have an all women crew and take on the men!

Follow our adventures...share our laughs...cheer us on...

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Twilight Race 5

Chaos and mayhem on the water - not a new experience but tonight a different one. Nineteen boats started the race in a stiff 10-15 knot breeze.  We girls had taken Pathfinder out and around the first mark, before the start of the race, and were congratulating ourselves on the thought that we could make the buoy without having to tack once. We should have known life could not always be so easy. Either the wind had change or our angle of approach to the buoy was different but tack we had to do.  It was chaotic on the water with yachts flying everywhere. We had a good competitive start but slipped back in the field as we finally achieved the first mark. On the reach to the second mark we were hemmed in by a couple of other yachts and as the mark was reached we had to give way to a pushy guy in a concrete hulled yacht who came up from behind and pushed us out. On turning at the buoy we almost ran into the same culprit when we decided to jibe and he didn't. Scary stuff! Unfortunately we lost ground - never to make it up. The run down to the third mark was disappointing as we just could not get the jib to "goose wing" properly. We struggled to get the wind into the foresail and thus again lost ground. We could only watch as the guy in the concrete boat barged through the fleet cutting other yachts off, tacking across their bows and generally generating mayhem. We were a bit stressed  having to cope with such inconsiderate traffic. What was happening was in the rules but certainly showed no gentlemanly manners on behalf of the solo yachtsman! The other culprit was a dilapidated yacht sailed by a group of hippy clones. (You could almost smell the "grass" from our deck!) They were busy having a great time cutting across our bows and we were having to constantly be alert to their whereabouts. Although the run own to the third mark was disappointing we made quite an improvement on the tacking course straight down river to the next mark.  Weaving between the boats on the second to last leg of the race was hair-raising at times and we can only be thankful that Anne really knows the rules. 
We had a good run back to the finishing line gaining on some of the rest of the rest of the fleet. We were not last across the line but were disappointed that we did not perform as well as last week.  
When the results were read out we found ourselves 13th out of 19 - again. What a coincidence - we have now been 13th in three of the five races to date.  The results of Sunday's race were also read out and we got a good cheer from the members for placing 3rd. 

We were pleased with our performance overall - few of our tacks were sloppy and sail handling in general is improving.  "Pathfinder" was probably not pointing as high into the wind as she did  last week and dodging traffic certainly kept us on our toes.   We all enjoyed the race and look forward to next time. 'Til then  good sailing!




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