True Blue – Enterprise Report 2012-09-19
There’s been this new Enterprise on the dinghy park for the last couple of weeks. No one knew much about it, except for Peter who said that being blue it must be really fast. Peter also has a blue boat which colours his judgement.
Anyway, come Wednesday it was Nick and son Doogie who joined the fray in the mystery new Ent. Nick is a sailmaker which is means ‘professional sailor’ in most people’s world. He’s been racing all types of boats but most notably to be found at the front end of the feisty J24 fleet. No pressure then.
The course was set by new Race Officer Chris Hampe who gave us 2 short laps to allow for the early sunset just after 7pm
Wind: North Westerly
Course: South Winter, Ash (Windward Mark), NW Winter, Liberty Yachts.
The line allowed a reaching start to South Winter and all the boats were pretty much on the line for the gun. It was newcomer Nick showing the way forward with good speed from the leeward end of the line.
He was first round South Winter closely followed by the usual suspects. The leg from South Winter to Ash was very shifty with a big incoming tide. Peter Ganderton went up the right side and went from 5th to first in a single leg. Up the left there was plenty of place changes with each gust and shift coming down the Tamar. Nick’s new blue boat has great speed downwind but needs a bit of tuning upwind which resulted in a few dropped places.
Around Ash it was Gandy followed by Martin and Nick, Peter and Chris in Dyskinetic.
After such a dominant upwind leg Different Shade was under pressure as the flood tide against us and moderate breeze meant the downwind section was a bit of wind versus tide struggle. All the chasing boats were brought together in a clump around NW Winter making Peter and Alan very nervous indeed.
The next leg was to the Liberty Yachts buoy in the Cattewater. Martin in No Handles forced The Spoon onto the fresh breeze gravy train up to windward. This left Peters in the middle and Nick coming down the leeward side. By the time the fleet reached the Cattewater all the boats were in a line with Nick recovering the lost ground to take the lead by being the inside boat at Liberty Yachts.
Rounding second was Peter and Alan in Different Shade followed by us in the Spoon.
Different Shade lost a bit of pace down the fetch to South Winter and was overtaken by The Spoon and Martin in No Handles.
The sun was setting on a beautiful evening as we rounded South Winter. Nick lead out on starboard tack to get best tide while we took off on port to get inside the wind bend. By the top of the beat the better breeze paid off and the Spoon had 30 metre lead on Peter Hinkling and Martin Bevan.
The positions remained the same to bring the race and the long summer series to a close.
This was the first race for the new Race Office Chris Hampe and all went really smoothly. Jon Buckler was also away so the Safety RIBS were manned ad hoc. A big thank you to everyone who helped make the race possible.
If you would like to help out with Safety RIBs or on the line crew we have articles on what’s involved.
