Melbourne to Geelong Race. 630am and up for coffee and bacon and eggs. Everything here seems reasonably priced, food, grog and Waterfront City berthing was $45 per night. Clean towels for showering and a yachty lounge where you can relax with a cuppa watching TV in air conditioning or jump on their 2 computers or simply plug in your own. 9am start and we were off on the sth. start line with the big boys. Left Waterfront City at 7.30am to give us plenty of time. There’s something about sailing out of the Yarra and looking out at all the other boats. It certainly gets the blood pumping, Having a ship as big as the Titanic coming out of the river at the same time also is a little nerve racking. That is one time I wish our trimaran was a little thinner!!
We decided to make a pin end start and try and find some clear air. The water was chopped up a lot with all the boats and our small light tri didn't like it. We footed off and headed to shore and tacked our way up to the first mark. After a minor port Starboard incident at the first mark, (like we were on starboard and they on port!!!) we settled down to chase to the second mark. It was disappointing to be approximately the 20th boat round with the first few boats already on the Horizon. We sailed along keeping pace with the 30-40 footers before the wind came in. Once we were able to foil the main hull lifted out of the water and we increase to around 15 knts which we held until we could ease sheets at channel marker 12A.
At this stage the 4 tp52's and living doll were still in front with the first 2 boats well down the leg. Now we were into the $1000000 boys and looking down the track thought they were too far in front to catch. With a steady 16-18knts blowing now, Bare Essentials was reaching a long at 18knts hitting 20knts in the gusts. We seem to pass Living Doll and the first TP52 quite quickly and suddenly dawned on me we might have a chance to be first over the line. Rob checked his GPS out and we still had 4 miles to the gate and a screaming reach up the channel after that. Well as the saying goes “No Guts No Glory” Lets go for it and see what happens.
“Put the screecher up and lets really chase these wonderful monos down” (not exact words used on the day). Libby moved to leeward and started un-clipping the screecher ready for hoisting. Just as she did, mother nature unleashed a bullet and we shot off at 20knts straight into a wave and for the first time on Bare I saw Cruisey shoot the Jib to lift the bow. Libby got wet a little I believe and I think it was a group decision that the screecher could stay exactly where it was! The “NO RUMS REQUIRED RULE’ came into play. For those of you not familiar with this rule, please see Chris sooky paints Culph from Sknot to explain.....Stay tuned for part 2.....
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