Australia Day fell on a Tuesday this year. I was able to get Monday off and so committed to 4 days sailing the Audi Victoria Week Regatta on Peregrine with Ryan, Barry, Tessa, Chris, Kingie, Luke, the two Logs - Adam and Greg, Bazza, Pugs, and Charlotte. Previously known as ANA Regatta, Geelong Week now bloody 'Victoria Week'. We sailed in the cruising div with spinnakers. This is a performance handicap event and we went crap on handicap despite being the most consistent finisher making it across the line 2nd in 3 of the four races.
Friday - The Passage Race was started in a light southerly. The start line was long with the boat end favoured. Barry was spot on with the timing, but an early boat bearing away pushed us up and into a barging position. It was lucky that there was enough gap to get us thru and we were first boat over the line closest to the start boat. Some tossers called us for barging, but didn't follow it thru with a protest. I recon we would have survived it. Our plan was to sail the south side of the course, but ended up on the right. Not too much damage. After a couple of rain fronts came thru the wind settled into a steady 15 - 18 knot sea breeze. We were disappointed after beating the other 4 Sydney 36's and in particular Wild Goats (a newer Syd 36) to find ourselves posting a 24th on handicap. Wild Goats finished 4th on handicap.
The big news of the day was Magic Bullet tee-boned Ten Too (Adams 10) near Point Cook. Ten Too sank in 14 meters of water. Magic Bullet, after taking Ten Too's crew aboard retired with significant damage to the bow. I wonder what the conversation was like on board as they made their way back home?
Saturday - Logs arrived with a slab of Crownies (bottled, not can beer) confirming that we really should be approaching the event in "cruising' mode. Ryan wasn't convinced and after pinging the port end start we were amongst the leaders at the first mark. using the shifts out of Stingray bay better than the others brought us up to lead boat where we stayed for a while. We were glad to be ahead of a big bunch of boats at the You Yangs mark who all fell into a hole. There was plenty of calling for buoy room and other rule requirements. We were never able to run down lead boat before the finish and came across the line 2nd.
Sunday. Again an excellent start. This time were were first boat to the top mark and kept this position until we ran into a hole near the beginning of Hope Town Channel. A competitor Reverie got thru us and we spent the rest of the race casing him down. The race was shortened just before we caught him resulting in another 2nd across the line. In this race we managed to get enough separation from the rest of the fleet to also get 2nd on handicap.
Monday, An early start saw only one AWOL - Greg Logs. He had a big night last night. Very light breeze mainly from the south. Spinnaker start had us 5th boat at the first mark. We won back all but 4 positions by sailing close to the western side of the bay and picking up the sea breeze ahead of the rest of the fleet. Again a 2nd over the line.
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