Fall Series - Shearwater Race 2025-11-01

Our course today for our annual Shearwater race took us from South to North through the Willingdon beach mark and then clockwise around Harwood Island with a finish north to south back at Willingdon, a distance some 14 nautical miles. Six boats entered the race.

The start was very wet and slow. Our wind indicator would rotate clockwise and then anti-clockwise with barely enough wind to fill the sails as we tacked them every two minutes, trying in vain to harness something, anything. Meanwhile the current was determined to take us to Lund. Three of us found ourselves stuck together like match sticks in a box. Others floated aimlessly. Then after some forty minutes, the predicted north wester began to fill the sails and off we went. Bring Ice had the lead followed by Balderdash and Una while Seance slowly closed. The wind strengthened. Una moved up on Balderdash and then moved into the lead after tacking away from a couple of headers. As the wind strengthened further some found their chosen sails to be over-powering. Sheets got seriously jammed. Changing conditions required serious reefing. Three crews found the conditions too demanding and wisely bowed out of the race.

Balderdash, Seance and Una remained to finish as miraculously the winds slowly dropped into a very pleasant range. The downhill spinnaker run from to Harwood spit to Willingdon happened in glorious sunshine. First to cross was Balderdash followed by Seance and finally Una. Congradulations to Balderdash for line honours and to Una for the win. After such a slow start the race was in fact one of the fastest on record having been completed in under four hours.

Results

* The PHRF rating for Balderdash was adjusted for having a fractional spinnaker instead of a full masthead spinnaker.