Day 1 to Pokai Bay
Day 2 from Pokai Bay
5 Crew: Adam, Jordan, Natalie, Matt, Dinko.
4/9/2016: Saturday: WIND!!! Perfect, glorious wind! We missed the start by a couple minutes (the start flag was hidden behind the race committee boat) but we threw the spinnaker up before crossing the line to start with full-steam ahead. Siren practiced her first gybe, then gybed a couple more times down to Barber’s Point for good measure. We also played with blocking some of our competitors’ wind along the way, bwaahahaaaaa. After calling in at Barber’s Point we attempted to deploy the jib in preparation for dousing the spinnaker. But the jib sheet was stuck fast between the spinnaker guy’s donut and the tip of the pole preventing our douse. We finally got it out by untying it from the jib’s clew, deploying the jib with a single sheet, then dousing the spinnaker. This huge mistake put us well downwind around the point and we had to make a big tack to get back up to the finish, giving up one of our places in the final results, bah! But as we learned at the hot tub later, all ya gotta do is “snap it, push away, MADE-and-that’s-it!” We came in last the first day, but it was a blast and we got a lot of spinnaker practice.
That night we officially paid for a slip at Koolina Marina and left the boat secure to go for a swim, splash around in the hot tub, drink a back-pack full of beers and share other various alcohols with the other crews (wine, Bulgarian moon-shine, etc). I’m actually surprised we weren’t kicked out for being so rowdy, haha. Dinner was a drunken mashup of potatoes, onions, spam, curry powder and cabbage on the boat, then fell fast asleep to the lullaby of hard-partying yachties talking over each other to be heard. Thank you Dinko, for keeping Siren from losing ALL face as the most boring crew on the overnight :)
4/10/2016 Sunday: That morning the blazing sun woke us up at 6am for coffee, Iburprofen and ready-made sandwiches from the fridge. We returned the key fobs and sailed a beam reach to Electric Beach to anchor before the race start. We had an amazing snorkel session, jumped back aboard to heave anchor 30 minutes prior to the start. This time we sailed back and forth within biscuit toss of the committee boat to ensure we would see the 5 minute warning flag and start our timer. Boom! “Five Minutes!!!” We counted down and crossed the Committee Boat end of the line within inches of Knot Right’s stern. The wind was directly in our teeth all the way to Barber’s Point, but again, PERFECT wind for full main and jib the whole way. Then just a single tack all the way up the South Shore. We were playing leap frog with 86’ed the whole way, adjusting trim, weighing inshore and offshore courses but finally the wind picked up just a little more and our waterline pushed us ahead. We finished ahead of 86’ed and far enough ahead of Knot Right to beat them on adjusted time (Siren PHRF 114, Knot Right PHRF 150, so we had to come in ahead by 36 seconds per mile for a 20 mile course equals 720 seconds sois 12 minutes. Nailed it!)
