Twiglight Racing

I’ve been doing the twighlight racing on Tuesday evenings at the yacht club. They are generally an hourish long course out round the heads and back into the bay. There are only 2 PTs that come so nothing super exciting, I’ve been doing pretty meh as per usual but having fun which is good.

First Capsize

I flipped the boat finally. Heading on a broad reach back from the number 16 bouy in a 20+ kt southerly I got caught out by a gust that came over the hills and wasn’t sitting back far enough so plouged the nose in and rolled it doing nearly 12 kts. I was able to flip it back up but it just caught the wind and flipped back over again. This was a bit of a mistake. The tramp caught the wind and it started sailing away from me. Thankfully it turtled itself in the next couple seconds otherwise I doubt I would have been able to swim after it. I tried to flip it back upright but to no avail, I thought I knew how to do it but didn’t have the weight or energy to do it.

The issue was how far I ended up drifting. Since it was a southerly I was drifting closer and closer to the warf were the ships were working. A few boats that were racing did pass me but weren’t able to offer assistance which was ok, I was pretty comfortable sitting on the boat. A learn to sail class from Ocean Sports was in the area and noticed me, they weren’t able to get hold of the yacht club but contacted beacon hill and they got hold of the yacht club to send someone out to pick me and the boat up. Massive thanks to Ocean Sports for helping coordinate. When the support boat arrived we got to work trying to tow the boat, man it was a pain. It didn’t like staying straight at all and towed pretty crappily. I was chucked in the bow of the support boat and huddled up a bit. Tamerlane, who had just finished racing, offered to pick me up and take me back to the yacht club via the marina which was very nice of them as I was getting reasonably chilly. I was put on board and given some warm water and blankets. Massive thanks to the crew for getting me back to shore safely.

Back on shore, with my boat on land up the right way (thanks Rowdy!) I learnt that my mast had completely filled with water and it would have been impossible for me to flip it back upright myself anyway. I learnt that I should install some righting lines and also a tow bridle to make it a little easier to tow. The mast being not watertight is a little pain because there is this weird gash where the mast meets the mast step which will need filling. Not a massive challenge but just a little annoying.

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