The News

The Circus has been safely delivered to Lyttelton. 31 hours - 30 to the harbour entrance and the last hour becalmed drifting to the finish line - and we all know how well GJ copes with light-air sailing! The sense of humour level was fairly low by the end for both of us . . .

The wind was mostly from the south, though it swung around to the west around midnight Tuesday, and stayed that way until mid-morning Wednesday. This made for a very uncomfortable first six hours with only 15-17 knots of wind but disturbed 2 metre swells and significant chop through Cook Strait (and a sea-sick skipper). It calmed down a bit before swinging around for a fairly nerve-wracking run through the pitch-dark in lumpy seas in the small hours. We got the kite up for a while after sunrise before the wind died then went south again, building to 25 knots and big seas again for the drive to Banks Peninsula (this is where I almost lost it, I'd had enough of hard slog and getting my technique right - I just wanted to get there!).

Our strategy to start with was to stay in touch with the Thompson 30 Underworld. After they put up their gennaker and took off, we kept the same course, but ended up a fair way out to sea. After that we regularly plotted our position on the chart and some smart navigation through Wednesday meant we sailed a good line to catch up a lot of ground and overtake a few boats.

Jeremy the autohelm made a debut appearance, and we were quite chuffed with his efforts until he drained our batteries, leaving us in the dark with no instruments and no GPS (the hand-held had clapped out too) - even the stars disappeared behind clouds. It was a fairly terse response to the midnight sched!

The results are on the RPNYC website. As first two-handed boat across the line in the inaugural two-handed to Lyttelton, Flying Circus now holds the record. We would like to have beaten the chasing boats by a greater margin, but that wind-hole at the end allowed them to catch up significantly despite our efforts to fins any wind across the harbour - ahhh well, that's yacht racing.

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The race started at 5am after being postponed from 4am the previous morning due to a savage weather forecast. The early start is required to minimise the impact of these tidal rips at Karori and Terawhiti.

Crew from front to back Brady, Nicolas, Amanda, Janine, Graeme (Hamish photographer). Taken just after rounding Brothers when the seas and breeze were being kind to us.

Mainsheet Madness in the Morning

We had a shocking start starting off with a bit of a round up in the start sequence when the mainsheet got twisted up in the darkness. Thankfully not too many people would have witnessed that at 5am. We decided to go for the clubhouse end of the line in breeze conditions which looked to be quite good. In the dark conditions is looked to have filled in for our course to the harbour entrance however when the lights went out for the start we traveled approx 100m and parked up in a hole.

Young Nicholson who was last to start sailed past us in the darkness and The fleet had got to Point Halswell before we eventually got breeze and started to chase them down. Going out through the heads we managed to catch up and pass two of the boats and then it turned into the drag race to the rips. Things got pretty gnarly through them with a couple of big green ones coming over the deck. It gave the two offshore virgins a taste of what was to come. The rips took approximately 1hr to get through and are a literal washing machine of standing water. Quite an experience. We elected to take a more Southerly route through the currents where there seemed to be more breeze. We were making good progress against the competition who war inshore and rock hopping taking a shorter route through calmer water but with what looked to be less wind.

Once past Terawhiti we launched the gennaker and took a bit of a gamble again on straight lining it to the South Island. There were some nice waves to ride on though the breeze was somewhere around 15kts and we were struggling to maintain an average speed of 11kts with the odd burst up to 13.5kts when we timed it right. A bit over halfway down were decided we were compromising our course using the Gennaker so changed up to the No1 Spinnaker and flattened off at about the same speed.

We arrived at Brothers

sometime around 9:14 just behind Young Nicholson, our Young 11 competition and Esprit having peeled past another two boats across the straight.. The three of us took a wide berth around the Islands fearing a dropping off the breeze, radioed in as per the schedule and started our return back across Cook Straight heading for Korokoro. The tide was giving all of us a hard time and we had been pushed well North so we spent a good couple of hours getting back up to level with the Brothers again. A couple of the other boats behind us took a much closer route against the islands taking the gamble that there was breeze in there and it paid off for them. They were comfortably able to crack sheets slightly and gain a speed advantage going across while we were pointing up and maybe 1/2 a knot slower.

Things gradually evened out and we climbed back above them and once we got closer to the West coast of the North Island we engaged in a series of tacks and made some great gains which bought all of the boats pretty close together.

The breeze was building again

It was getting up to around 30kts as we neared the 'wind factory' around the rips on the South Coast. Getting closer to the rips again we closed up all of the hatches, snibbed onto the jack lines and put our snorkels on as things were looking much rougher. Things started out pretty much as expected with large standing waves and big troughs where the boat was crashing down and then ploughing immediately into the next steep wave. These waves were close to 3 metres and less than 10 seconds apart. We all smashed through this with Gucci and Young Nicholson going in close and Esprit, Blue Magic and ourselves a bit further out. Young Nic and Gucci tacked across and headed into the coast before Karori Lighthouse and we kept going for another 200m towards what looked to be calmer water. This in fact turned out to be bigger water which was kicking the crap out of us. We needed to get out of here so we tacked on the crest of a swell and started beating towards the Harbour entrance. Gucci and Young Nicholson were rock hopping along a lee shore and seemed to be having an OK time of it. We continued to get the crap beaten out of us for what seemed like an hour and once we got to Houghton Bay everything had got quite a bit better.

Gucci and Young Nicholson were still rock hopping inside us and as we headed for 'Moaning Minnie' Young Nic rounded about 10 min ahead of us and Gucci about 5 mins ahead of us. We had pulled back a bit on them but had taken quite a pasting. We threw up the No1 Spinnaker and started our charge down the harbour entrance trying to chase them down. We were making some good gains on Gucci at Kau Bay and heard the call for Young Nic finishing approx 7 mins ahead of us. Gucci and our boat played the puffs heading up the harbour and eventually they pipped us by 26sec although it did seem closer.

Well done to our crew

They all did really well and can mark off a well earned experience. I have to say that the rums, the beers, the food we hadn't eaten and a bask in the sun was a pretty good end to what was a pretty tough drag race.

Comments

Brothers race is really a test, inside the harbour races are fun and some skill is required, but Brothers race is the closest experience to being a real sailor I have ever had. Just outside Wellington harbour the waves size and wind speed get doubled as minimum the entire scenario changes immediately. Tough crew work and patience was tested on board. Brothers Race 2008 from Nicolas Perez - Mastman on Flying Circus

If the race timing was geared for kind seas and tides I'd hate to see what an unkind time would have been like! A SE flood tide in the 2nd half would have been nice. It was difficult to do so in the dark at that time of the day but some brainstorming on sail and course strategy over the charts would have helped I think and is something we should do next time. Apart from some cracked lips, I'm fine and overall it was a good experience for me. Brothers Race 2008 from Hamish - Trimmer on Flying Circus

We have a News Archive page with all the news from 2006 and back. This page was getting a bit long.