Saturday May 14, 2011 - It has been a busy few weeks for Krikkit! April 30 saw Simon, Marek, Denice, Kevin White and Ian Johnson come aboard for the VARC Halibut Bank/Popham Island race. The day dawned cool with sunny skies but, it first seemed, no wind. This quickly changed at the start line where a decent breeze popped up to see the fleet launched, and built to the point where Krikkit was bordering on overpowered with the big 150 genoa up. The big decision point was whether to stay out in the strait for better wind or go to the Bowen shore for current relief. We stayed out but it didn't work entirely in our favour, with the boats that headed into shore gaining distance. After rounding the mark at Popham we made up ground on some of them under spinnaker in the softening wind, passing Marbella (who wasn't in our division anyway) and almost-but-not-quite catching Godzilla in our division, giving us a finish near the back of the eight-boat fleet ahead of Takaya and Celtic Blue(Brigadoon won our division, with Arashi and Coho rounding out the top three). Overall it was a fun day, certainly better than for the Div 1 and 2 fleets, which got out to Halibut Bank but lost their wind out there and had to ghost back in under light air. (Photo: Div 2 gets underway at the Halibut/Popham Race)  |
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