There is a ship, just to the right of this picture, can you see it ?
We left Gulf Harbour at 6.30am in the thickest fog I have seen in ages. Our AIS (automatic identification system) getting good use as we approached the harbor with plenty of commercial shipping around. I had particular sympathy for a ship we passed within 0.2 of a mile of, we just briefly managed to discern as a shadow and a noise, but a very reassuring identification on our Expedition showed his name, position, course and speed. He wouldn’t have been able to see the front of his own boat and I hoped the 160 other yachts in the race would be careful.
Waiting for the start.
The fog burnt off by midday and after a postponed start we were away on a tight reach, the code 0 getting a short workout before a tricky light patch off Waiheke that we got an average passage through. From there on the race was pleasant but uneventful, a light run down to Flat Rock off Kawau, and some light on the wind sailing that didn’t really give us too many opportunities to show off. We finished just after midnight knowing we hadn’t embarrassed ourselves, but no podium this time.
Looking back at the start.
On the wind, Force Eleven in the back ground.
BUT
This was the first outing for our new Nexus instruments, I am still smiling. The instrument pod I had made located them perfectly and they were just SUCH a pleasure to use. The visibility was excellent, and instead of dreading the night ( for lack of visibility with our old instruments) I eagerly anticipated it, the night time visibility of the reverse lcd with either red or green backlighting is a quantum leap for us. We can now access any information that we want and it integrates fully with our Expedition software. We really have a world class navigational system that I can be proud of now.
We will now be calibrating optimizing and recording a huge range of data that I believe will lift our overall performance in a longer race by at least 5 %. I just cant wait to use the system again.
Rob
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