Course with a Kink Wednesday Wonders Winter Series 2016 Race 7

18 May 2016

PIPPA (Jeffrey Woolhouse) won her second race in succession to become not only the first multiple race winner this series but also the 5th aggregate leader in five completed races. Both wins have been around courses longer than 10 nautical miles. The course for this race, course 64, is an 8-leg course of 10.1 nautical miles. This is an unusual course and can catch out the innocent because it includes a kink - leg from 7 to 3 then to 4, to be all left to starboard. It proved to be a good race for the early starters with 7 of them among the first 11 yachts to finish. It is possible that the earlier starters had a little more breeze (17 knots) at the start of the race which eased a little as the afternoon progressed. Observations at Fawkner Beacon indicate that the breeze was a north westerly that averaged about 16 knots and ranged from 18 to 14 knots during the afternoon. It was possibly less than this inshore.

WW Winter Series 2016

Race 7 Wind Speed & Direction

0

5

10

15

20

25

time

win

d s

peed

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ots

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04590135180225270315360

win

d d

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rees)

Wind Speed 18 17 15 15 15 15 16 16 15 14

Gusts 22 21 17 17 21 21 18 17 17 17

Wind Direction 315 315 315 315 315 315 315 292.5 315 315

1300 1330 1400 1430 1500 1530 1600 1630 1700 1730

The average elapsed time was under 2 hours at 1:51:57 and all the 32 fleet had finished the race by 16:07:59. It was STAMPEDE (Christopher Gendala) who recorded the fastest elapsed time – 5 minutes faster than her closest rival, THE SECRETARY (George Shaw). The Beneteau First WHITE NOISE (Daniel Edwards) and the Beneteau 367 UPBEAT (Peter Dunne) sailed the course in the same time. They started 5 minutes 5 seconds apart and finished 5 minutes apart. At the beginning of the race BELLABLU (John Lake) won Start of the Day only a second late for her 36-minute handicap. Five yachts started too soon and were each penalized 5 minutes that again proved costly. CARPE DIEM (Paul Commins) could have finished 7th not 20th; WHITE POINTER (Tom Raft) 8th rather than 21st; ALIBI (Denis Hambleton) 16th not 27th; FAST COMPANY (Albert Doggett) 17th rather than 28th; and, LEBROK (Theo Korbel) 21st not 30th.

PIPPA started this race with an extra 3-minute increase to her handicap following a win in race 5. She was the second yacht to start, 11 seconds late for her 7-minute handicap. At the first rounding of number 4 she was in the lead after passing her sister yacht WILLARIE (Graeme Kaufman). PIPPA sailed the course in 2:10:02 and was first across the finish line at 15:47:02. This completed the 4th race this series for PIPPA and she has 2 wins and a top ten finish. This latest win puts her on top of the aggregate with 10 points – a 7-point lead over FOGGY DEW (Grahame Jones) in 2nd place.

FOGGY DEW had a very good start to this race only 2 seconds late for her 22-minute handicap from 4th place. She sailed the first 5 legs of the course in 1:05:30 and rounded number 4 in 3rd place 6 minutes 36 seconds astern of WILLARIE in 2nd place. FOGGY DEW sailed the remaining 3 legs of the course in 50 minutes 39 seconds to cross the finish line at 15:48:11. She has completed all 5 of the races in this series and as 3 top ten finishes. This 2nd place lifted FOGGY DEW for 10th to be 2nd in the aggregate.

The S80 BON VIVANT (Russell Keyes) crossed the finish line in 3rd place at 15:48:33 only 22 seconds behind FOGGY DEW. BON VIVANT had started from 6th place only 4 seconds late for her 23-minute handicap. She was in 4th place at the first rounding of number 4 after sailing the first 5 legs of the course in 1:05:41. She was able to complete the last 3 legs of the race in the good time of 49 minutes 48 seconds. BON VIVANT has sailed 3 races this series, and this is by far her best result after finishing 28th and 25th

off the same 23-minute handicap in races 2 and 5. This latest result lifted her 7 places to be 30th in the aggregate.

The start to this race was one of mixed fortunes. With a median start time of 9 seconds this could be considered the best start of the series. Unfortunately 5 yachts were a little too eager to start and crossed the line early and were penalized whilst another yacht took the start too leisurely and was 7 minutes 20 seconds too late.

There were two oustanding performances in the race, with both THE SECRETARY and STAMPEDE moving up 20 places from their respective starts. THE SECRETARY started from 28th place to finish 8th whilst STAMPEDE started from 31st place and finished 11th. The closest finish was for 8th and 9th places between THE SECRETARY who finished 1 second ahead of SURI (Rick Blanck). The average time between yachts at the start of the race was 1 minute 32 seconds and this difference became 39 seconds at the finish line.

Only two of the the mid fleet starters and 2 late starters were among the first 11 yachts to finish the race. The first 5 yachts across the finish line were all among the first 11 yachts to start.

For the 4th time in 5 races STAMPEDE was the fastest yacht in the race which saw UPBEAT and WHITE NOISE having the same elapsed time and INSX (Rob Sill) was only 2 seconds faster than WIND SPEED (Les Browne). The average elapsed time was 1:51:57 with 7 yachts managing more than a 2 hour sail.

The following table highlights the yachts that have received handicap adjustments from one race to the next. For race 7 six yachts had increases to their handicap (shown in red) whilst 2 yachts had decreases (shown in green).

WW WINTER SERIES 2016 HANDICAP ADJUSTMENTS

YACHT RACE NUMBER

1 2 3 5 7

ALIBI 45 45 45 45 45

BABYDOLL 39 39 39

BARNSTORMER 45 45 45 45 45

BELLABLU 35 35 35 35 36

BON VIVANT 23 23 23 23

CARPE DIEM 49 49 49 49 49

CARRERA 20 CASSANDRA MELBOURNE 19 19 19 19 19

CAVALIER 18 20 20 20 21

CONQUEST 50 52 52

ESPRIT 52 52 52 52 52

FAST COMPANY 36 36 36 36 36

FIREFOX 24 24 24

FOGGY DEW 23 23 23 21 22

FUN AND GAMES 42 42 42 42

GUN BOAT 23 23 23 23 23

INSX 46 46 46 46 46

JOHNNY B. GOODE 27 28 28 28 28

LEBROK 37 37 39 39 39

MAGIC 30 30 30 30 30

MIDNIGHT MAGIC 1 1 1 1 1

MOANA 23 23 23 23 24

MORE NOISE 41 41 42 42 42

MY WAY 34 34 37 37 36

MYUNA III 33 33 33 33 33

PHOENIX 37 37 37 34 34

PIPPA 4 4 4 4 7

PIZAZZ 26 27 27 27 27

PRIMO 39 39 39 39 38

PUBLIC BAR 44 44 44 44 44

SALTSHAKER 20 20 20 20 22

SECOND NATURE 34 34 34 34 34

SHIMMER 42 42 STAMPEDE 50 50 50 53 53

SURI 28 28 28 28 28

THE SECRETARY 46 46 46 46 47

TRUE COLOURS 30 30 30 30

UPBEAT 38 38 37 37

VANTAGE 33 33 33 33 34

WHITE NOISE 41 41 42 42

WHITE POINTER 33 35 35 35 35

WICKED 50 50 50 50 50

WILLARIE 4 4 4 4 4

WIND SPEED 45 45 47 47 47

A reminder, take positive action and book now for Recreational Boating Breakfast - July 3 2016

Maddie.commins@syc.com.au

MARK Windward’s Positive Paragraphs Don’t grizzle and moan - let your views be known

Be Positive: Assist the Sailing Committee and let them know what you think. Go to the Sail Committee Meeting 9th June 2016 – 7.30pm Port Phillip Room Sail Committee is seeking input from skippers & crew before the finalization of the Keelboat Race calendar for the next summer & winter program. This is an opportunity for you to communicate to the Sailing Committee

What would you like to see in the sailing program?

What works for racing members?

What needs changing? The Sail Committee members are keen to hear from you, Be positive: Offer to have the Go Pro camera fitted to your yacht to record a race from your yacht’s perspective. Andrew is collecting footage to make a short video for the end of season. Ask Andrew Lynch (Cavalier) to set up a date. Be positive: In taking your penalties. If you infringe a rule do your penalty turns. If you sail the wrong course declare you are DNF. (Consider, if you missed a mark, went back to round it, but lost about 20 places, how you would feel about another yacht just ignoring their error.) Take positive action and ensure that your sailing instructions are current. Now is the time to ensure that you have the correct courses. The handicapper has given plenty of warning that he will make use of all the courses to suit the prevailing winds so don’t expect the same few courses every week. Be positive in your thanks to the tower and to the handicapper. Let them know you appreciate the time that they put in to your racing. Be positive in checking your crew are all onboard before you leave the marina. It may assit your starting time.

Century Class Winter 2016 The next race, Race 8, is the Second Winter Century Class race.

Note: If a Century Class race is cancelled or abandoned, then the next normal race (non Century Class) shall be counted with the exception of the last race in the season, in which case the results from the last normal race will apply.

An oversight in the results of the first Century Class race has been corrected and …. Congratulations for Second place go to Ken Gayler SALT SHAKER

Fact Check In this race, 10 mins after the first yacht finished 75%, or 24 yachts had crossed the line (including some non adjusted times for early starts). 2.2 seconds was the average time for the 5 yachts that were over the line early. Only a very small improvement is needed to gain Start of the Day.

This weeks viewing In case you missed the delightfully written log _ Part 2 of “Passage to Hati, The Village of Ll-a-Vache” CLICK Brought to you from Off Center Harbor.com A short 12 min clip that makes me wish I lived somewhere else other than the bay… and owned a Schooner like MARTHA to view CLICK Or a 8min clip “Schooner Martha Transpac Race to Honolulu” CLICK More details of rigging etc. on http://www.schoonermartha.org

A

A Quick Quiz RACE 7

What do you think is the Year and Place of this photo?

Send to MARK CLICK

Thanks for the feedback on last week’s report and the “Off the Wind“ articles. Any contributions, photos, video links, reports from your yacht are very welcome

MARK WINDWARD