Last race breakfast
The last day of racing had the volunteers, some the worse for wear, gather for coffee and croissants in the morning. As before, we were all aboard our catamaran in good time for our skipper to drive us away from the dock and to our pole position at the bridge.
Our skipper managed to place us 4 meters from the GPS coordinates, an astounding feat considering the wind and waves and current. Our first anchor attempt didn’t set, but the second one was successful and we held all day despite the growing waves and some serious gusts of wind.
10:00 Races
At this point in time the plan was to have the classes complete 3 races; windward-leeward courses. We got the first race off on their courses and the first finishers arrived much sooner than originally expected. The winds had picked up to over 20 knots with stronger gusts and we saw one spinnaker broach and several partial ones.
The second set of starts for all classes followed as soon as a race class was complete, so the order changed. Despite this, and finishing boats on one side while starting on the other, we managed without any problems. The finish line was fun to watch as the boats zipped towards us with sails up and at high speed. We had two teams on the starboard side of the cat doing the finishes while the rest of the crew was occupied with the starts.
Mark had decided that the conditions were strenuous for the racers and chose to limit the day’s racing to 2 races and both the crew aboard the race boats as well as the crew aboard the committee boat was happy with that decision.
Return
We had some great finishes on the second race and the classes were, for the most part, quite close together. There were some upsets for podium positions on the last day; and one straggler. The last boat in had broken their gooseneck and therefore had no boom for the mainsail and consequently were very slow. But they’d radioed in from afar that their intent was to finish the race, so we waited patiently for them.