Coastal Classic 2010 - Rob's point of view.

Many sailors love forecasts like we had for the coastal. Certainly is was a gorgeous day, southwest about 15 really really pleasant, champagne sailing is what it is called. The problem is that it doesn't really suit our boat relative to other lighter boats better at reaching, so actually we have to work a lot harder to get the best of our boat. Basically the coastal is a 120 nautical mile race where you sail north up the coast for 100 miles go through a scenic but small and heinously tricky (shifty winds) gap between Cape Brett and Piercy island, turn hard left and its about 15 miles in through the Bay of Islands to the finish. Doesn't sound like much but I always think of it as half the race, tactically.

Our race was pretty uneventful until halfway across Bream Bay the wind shifted west and we had to drop the kite. We had a choice now of going either inside or outside the Hen and Chicken group of islands. Our Expedition performance and navigation software came into play for us here. We had confidence in the weather grib files we had downloaded and now had displayed as an overlay on our onscreen charts, It was easy for us to compare our potential courses and options. From our current position we could see that it was actually less distance for us to go outside. This allowed us to sail faster initially, with reasonable confidence that the wind would go back to the south giving us a better angle back to the coast later.

I think it worked well for us, problem was the high pressure over us made it quite hazy and we couldn't see our competitors. in fact we knew from our AIS there was an oil tanker just a few miles inshore of us that we could not see. The wind did go back enough to get our kite back up, unfortunately having to take it down when it spontaneously fell apart. So we got to test our modified prod with our gennaker and the great news is it passed with flying colours. Boat speed 10 knots with bursts up to 14, pretty good for our old girl. It was about this point I felt like I was getting some return for the long hours of preparation we had both put in. ( ok I was having fun ).

Cape Brett is the focal point when boats come together and you find out how you have done. We got happier, in company with boats we consider to be faster than us we hoisted our genoa and did a truly beautiful gennaker drop about 20 meters from Dog Islet. We were placed outside of the pack of boats going through the gap and the best passage through the "gate" that I can ever remember. Being furthest away from the shore paid off for us as we sailed on the wind into the Bay of Islands. With a few tacks on the now failing breeze we crossed the line about 2:20am happy that we had done our best. Result ? We achieved a second in our 2 handed division which we were very happy with in conditions that didn't really suit our boat

Things that worked well for us :

• Expedition, for confidence when you need to make decisions. 

• The modified prod it is been tested now and it is still straight, great !

• The Tuff Luff we just fitted. It really is easier to pre-feed the sails into.

• The martin breaker on the gennaker tack. When we just want the gennaker down it comes down. Over the boom down the main hatch, no drama. We will run a martin breaker on the spinnaker brace in stronger winds too.

Thanks Neil for all the work on our electrics, computer and autopilot

Thanks Jenny and Jackie for helping with the sail repairs after the last windy simrad race

Thanks Sally for putting in just as much effort as me in every part of our project and for making a website that I think is just incredible.