The fleet included Richard Jackson, Paul Fleming, Andrew McDougall, James Owen-Smith, Kohei, Leigh Dunstan (me) and a guest appearance from New Zealand 49er sailor and moth champ Peter Burling, borrowing Martin boat. Rohan Veal ran the racing and did a fantastic job.
It's hard to paint a picture of how challenging the conditions were, with 18-20 knots blowing across the short slalom course with typical Port Phillip waves of close to 1m. The challenging part was the second and fourth buoys of the course were set 20-30m off a rock wall, to enhance the spectator appeal, with people looking down on the course from a balcony just above the bottom marks. What made things really interesting though was as you came closer to the rock wall the water became much shallower so the waves stood up out of no where and chaos followed at almost all of these mark roundings. These mark rounding also saw some serious near misses, with only inches in it. The course was also set to maximise speed with most downwind legs having to be sailed at much higher angles than Moth are normally expected to sail. I know my top speed was 24 knots, which isn't massive, but you park a rock wall in front of you when your doing that speed and the experience is certainly much more intense than it would normally be.
I can't actually remember how many races we had, as it's pretty much a blur of constant crashes and carnage, I think it was four or five. The day belonged to Andrew McDougall who won all but the first race that I won.
A special mention has to go out to James who went out thinking it was a good idea to wear wetty shorts on Port Phillip Bay. Unfortunately he did what I did a couple of years ago and ripped the back of his leg open on the chain plate.
Thanks again to Rohan and Sandgringham YC for putting on some of the most intense racing any of us have ever been a part of.
Any video? There must have been someone ashore recording the racing.
ReplyDeleteThere was meant to be someone filming but it never happened (very upsetting). Richard had a go pro on and has done a great short clip, which I'll put up tonight. It is from the practice race which wasn't too full on as the breeze and waves hadn't filled in yet, but still well worth a look.
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