4th rig or death...

New Zealand edges ahead at C-Tech Performance claims the day

Wednesday January 9th 2013, Author: Richard Billett, Location: Australia

The little masts came off the trailers and the toy like sails were rolled out.. The sail out to the start was interesting.. Local boys on PB set off out of the channel after some womens windsurfer eye candy, and couple of skiffs followed after them only to realise that PB had very little board down at the time. Those following hit the bottom pretty quickly and sent it down the shallow mine. I saw a few of them running back to the centreboard.

The first race was quick. A solid 25 knots from the north saw the fleet power towards Green Island at great speed. There were a few lumps and bumps along the way, okay there were shit loads... Allwood Sails was first to the top and almost put it in during the rounding. They were very much all over the shop and this resulted in AGAIG going in right on the top mark.. It was chaos - boats tacking on each other, pushing poles through sails. We finally got through the carnage and the rest of the race was smooth sailing. Well done to the boys on Garde. It was pretty rough out there and they sure showed a clean pair of heels taking the gun. The Guru was next followed by Nick
and Andy on Gemmell Sails.

The breeze got fresher as the day wore on.. Just what the crews wished for! The second start was chaos, with Team Architecture doing some start line remodelling of Frankenskiff, then all boats headed north on starboard. On PB we felt fast and seemed to have plenty of height. We got the the top mark in a great position (2nd or 3rd) and this time it was us who caused the pile up. We sent it around the mark a bit hot and well, the pole went down down down. We got it up relatively quickly, only to see a capsizing AGAIG (not a pretty sight...) We had a little tangle and eventually pushed ourselves clear. Thank goodness the boat held together and we were able to battle on...

Looking around this evening there are some extremely exhausted and dehydrated (I assume that's the reason so much rum is being consumed..) crews floating about.

Back to the race... Garde were once again dominating in the field until they decided the Morton Bay tiger prawns were just too good to go past. Ginge [Alex Vallings] took it from there, and never looked back.. C-Tech Performance [with Fraser Brown on the wire] took both the line honours and handicap results in the second race. Absolute CNC did well too coming in second place. The Gemmell boys were third, leaving them in the driving seat for the overall results.

It was a tough day out there, and especially after yesterday's mammoth big rig effort. I'm sure everyone is relieved tomorrow is the lay day.

It's good to see we have already used every rig this regatta, and I hope the sailing continues to demonstrate that we are indeed sailing in skiff heaven!

Team Points:

AUS = 514

NZ = 531

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