Spring Series - Race 2025-04-26

In every sailboat race there are lessons learned. Fickle weather knows no loyalties. One might have a brilliant start and build a significant lead and have a happy crew fully expecting to claim the podium only to have the wind vanish in the final moments to go and attend to someone else's flogging sails. Today’s lessons were about patience and humility.

Our course was from Willingdon to the Mill mark, out halfway to Harwood to virtual mark “E”, downwind to Grief Point and back to Willingdon, a distance of some 9.5 nautical miles. Winds were from the North west for most of the race until they weren’t as in the last leg when they disappeared entirely before evolving into a weak westerly.

Balderdash, Bring Ice and Solitude got off to a good start, with Balderdash taking the lead and keeping it till the finish. Una had rigging issues at the start and was last to cross but with plenty of ballast on the rail she soon found her way to third place and then into second. Rounding the mid channel virtual mark the distances between the leaders and the rest lengthened until the final leg from Grief Point to Willingdon when the wind dropped for the leaders and everyone else caught up.

Una thought she had it made with a nice little shore breeze until she came a little too close to the Texada ferry wake. The ferry was sitting in dock and pushing with her props. The wake extending some two hundred feet or more out from her stern stopped Una in her tracks. Meanwhile Balderdash sat helplessly with no wind while Solitude and Bring Ice gleefully closed in from behind.

In the end Balderdash took line honours but was unable to make the podium. Una set the spinnaker for the second time and was able to pull away in the final stretch but not by quite enough as Solitude, sailing a very solid race took the win in corrected time. Well done Terry and Constance!

Results