Ten Boats – One Start Line
The normally expansive Nawilwili Harbor seemed small as 10 sailboats crowded the start line at the beginning of race #4 of the Gene Wells Memorial Race Series. Surprisingly there were no boats with reefed mainsails as the winds were gusting upwards of 15 knots out of the northeast. It was going to be another exciting white-knuckle race as boats and crews were stretched to their competitive limits.
The start of the race had boats 3 deep at the favored end of the line. Moments before the start horn Papa a’u tried to swoop in-between the starboard start buoy and the fleet only to be squeezed out as Fast Company was locked-and-loaded already in the prime spot behind the line. Speedy and OZone cracked off from their closed-hauled course to perform the balancing act of sailing just at the line but not over it perfectly poised at the instant the start horn sounded. Once the climactic moment of the start was behind them, the boats got down to the matter at hand – to sail as fast as they could to the next mark!
The wind chop the fleet encountered as they sailed out to the Lighthouse buoy was steep and close together. It’s no wonder that the boats were taking green water over their bows given that there is about 2,000 nautical miles of fetch for the wind to generate a chop. One crew member who sits at the front of the “rail meat row” section felt like there was at least 4,000 miles of fetch today.
Fast Company made the weather mark first followed by Bonjolea II then OZone. The downwind leg had Fast Company and Bonjolea II dueling it out with spinnakers flying. OZone was right behind waiting to capitalize on any slip up from the leaders.
The race continued back out to the Lighthouse buoy and then finished quickly with the last leg being a short course around the #2 buoy off of Kalapaki Beach. This last downwind leg in the harbor offered up what seemed to be a sustained gust for the fleet and the boats enjoyed a strong breeze without any chop. Kudos goes out to the crew of Papa a’u in their efforts to recover the spinnaker sheet as it had slipped out and the sail was flying free in the breeze.
At the finish Bonjolea II crossed first but corrected out to third place. Fast Company crossed second but scored first place corrected with OZone next to cross the finish line correcting out to second place. Other finishers were Weatherly, Papa a’u, Speedy, Coyote, Trinity, Windspan, and Lelele.
Kevin Arndt
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /hermes/bosnacweb06/bosnacweb06af/b293/nf.nawiliwiliyachtclub/public_html/nyc_wp/wp-content/themes/Nawiliwili/header.php on line 83