The first day of racing at Hamilton Island Race Week had plenty of challenges.
Catherine and I brought Debonnaire from Airlie Beach to Hamilton Island last Thursday and our crew flew in on Friday and Saturday. We have 13 in our group: Andrew and Jane, Leanne, Richard, Karen and Phil, John and Liz, Steve, Brigit and Colin, Catherine and me. The crew had not sailed since we left Melbourne in April so we had hoped to have a training session on Saturday but unfortunately it was too windy, blowing around 30 knots for most of the day. We would have to go into race 1 under-prepared.
This morning the wind was still quite strong at 25-30 knots but by the time our race started just before mid-day the wind had eased to 20-25 knots. The fresh wind was only part of the challenging conditions, though. A strong tidal current was flowing, too, making the downwind start even more tricky. Imagine 215 yachts jostling in a confined channel and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the pressure on the helmsman and skipper. Add to all this commotion a couple of commercial airplanes parting the fleet so they can land at the airport and you must agree we were faced with near-chaos. Fortunately, we had a clean start for our first race at Hamilton Island.
The highlight of the day was racing across Whitsunday Passage under spinnaker in winds up to 25 knots doing boats speeds of 10-12 knots. It was awesome feeling the power in the sails loading up the rigging and sending us speeding through the water. The crew worked well and soon were getting the feel of Debonnaire in the windy conditions. Setting sails, dousing spinnakers and tacking into the wind all went like clock-work. We had a couple of problems, too, but the crew did well to sort them out. Several other boats suffered torn sails but fortunately we had no damage. We finished 13th and Carpe Diem 9th. Considering this was our first race without the benefit of training, we’re looking forward to improving in each race the rest of the week.
Debonnaire 