A disappointing day

What a disappointing day

After having to cancel the two previous race days, everybody was looking forward to some good racing on November 2^nd. But it wasn’t to be.

The competitors and officials arrived at Los Urrutias marina to find a cloudless blue sky and a light wind blowing, as forecast. So, the preparations went ahead. The support boat crew laid the course as the competitors prepared their boats, and the Race Officer and his Assistant made their way to the swimming jetty to get ready for the 11am start of the first race.

Unfortunately, by this time the wind had died completely and not increased slightly as forecast, and the four boats just drifted about, going nowhere. The Race Officer was forced to delay the start. At 11.30am still no wind, 12.00 no wind, 12.30 no wind but a wind shadow could be seen approaching from the north. This finally arrived just after 1.00pm so the decision was taken to start the race at 1.30pm. As the wind was only 4.5 knots the course was shortened dramatically.

The first boat, Gemini Dos, did not cross the start line for 10 minutes and the last boat Sirocco took 30 minutes. Then it was all down to tactics.

 After starting Gemini continued away from the mark for some distance as did Lavanter but the last two boats to start, Vision and Sirocco, immediately turn to port towards mark one. This was the correct choice, and they both slowly pulled away. However, the pace was extremely slow so the race was shortened to just two laps.

The wind then increased a fraction which enabled Gemini to close the gap on the leader Vision and finished just 20 seconds behind, but both took close to 70 minutes for the two laps. Once the handicaps were applied Gemini was declared the winner.

Both Sirocco and Lavanter retired and did not finish.