Another great Goolwa to Meningie race, about 13 trailer sailers headed of from Goolwa in a very light head wind at 8am followed by 13 catamarans at 11am, including A Classes, Black Witch, Yvonne, Taipans, Nacra Infusion, Nacra 5.8’s, Hobie 16’s, my daughter Maeve and I on the Nacra 5.8 with spinnaker, still in the same wind, it was tedious in the warm sunlight trying to keep the boat going faster than 1 knot for the first hour so I took of my spray top, (you can guess what happened hours later when the wind hit), I readily admit to being a very bad light wind sailer and much prefer the wind over 20 knots as I find the closer to 30 knots the less skill I need. During this light air race we were coming last for a fair while which always gets Maeve grumbling, after the second hour the wind picked up to a starboard tack with some blustery swings enabling some ground to be covered, a gust sent the Black Witch over in the channel. The wind firmed up a bit after 1pm as we exited the Goolwa channel onto a nice spin run across the top of Lake Alexandrina where we got to a top speed of 16.4knots, we travelled that 20km in what felt like no time, until we got close to the entrance to the narrows where we were knocked down twice with some heavy wind shifts, these made us do wild bare aways, then spun us around with our mast close to the water before again filling the spin from behind and pulling us back up saving the capsize, a similar gust probably got the Taipan 5.7 of Tim Wright’s just as he was dousing the spin, they got hit with Josh going through the sail and bending the boom. We put the spin away and reached into the narrows. Some boats said they did numerous tacks in the narrows but we hit it with good speed and just limped past the ferry before we got a gust with a lift to get us into the channel, we overtook the leading six trailer sailers in the narrows. There was much less reeds than last year with more room, as the channel twisted and turned we went from reach, downwind, upwind, reach, upwind with a final four relatively quick tacks to get onto the lake in good solid wind. When we got onto lake Albert the only boat in sight was the Yvonne which was so far in front we could just see the red boat and sail, it was a good solid SSW wind, with top gusts around 20 knots with no holes in it, the wind had thrown up two to three foot chop and you guessed it, it was friggin cold without a spray jacket on, it was two on the wire, heaps of downhaul, point up as high as we could maintaining power, to push through the waves, with constant spray coming over the boat and down the top of my wetsuit. We made good time across the lake and only had to throw a small tack in to cross the finish line at the end.
At the time of writing this I didn’t have the full results. First cat over the line was Steve Kroon and Katrina on the Nacra Infusion F18 in 4hrs 28mins, first on handicap was Marcus Towell and his son Nathan on their Yvonne in 5hrs, fastest Meningie club member on handicap was Mick McGuire and Hugh on the Taipan 5.7 in 4hrs 34mins, we only just beat the Yvonne over the line and we were probably last on handicap but we learnt a bit more about light lake sailing and using the spin. This is still the best race in Australia, doing the last 40km in next to no time is an absolute buzz see you there next year.
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