Breakfast ashore
After our morning coffee and croissant at our volunteer central area at PdP, we gathered aboard our committee boat and departed for the bridge opening and subsequently to our start position.
We passed Zanshin on the way out, safely anchored just outside of the bridge and next to the old sunken dry dock. From there we motored out to Cole Bay and our skipper managed to anchor even closer to the given GPS coordinates.
Setting up and starting the race
Our Race Officer, Mark Townsend, set up the courses and we soon had our long start line set up and the racers circled around us in order to get a feel for the conditions and also to check in.
The start today was a downwind one, which can be challenging because there’s no way of “braking” a yacht when running downwind; so care has to be taken in order to prevent being OCS (on course side) during the start. The penalty is to turn around and get on the other side of the start line again and re-starting; which loses valuable time and distance in relation to the other racers.
Afternoon and Evening
As we only started our 7 classes today and had no follow-up races or finishes to contend with, we managed to return to our dock inside the lagoon early. This left us with a whole afternoon to ourselves and I returned to Zanshin to do some work on the boat and rest up for the evening.
The prizegiving ceremony was busy, with most of the crews for most of the boats showing up. The conditions had been good, but not excellent, so there was no chance of breaking the round-the-island record.
