A day of weaker trade winds, a result no doubt of us finding another crew member light enough to fill the remaining 121lbs left by the owner (we replace him with two people) again beng unable to race. The racing was fantastic leading to us taking 3rd place in the first race by under a second. We came back from two boat lengths behind Walloping Swede into a gybing duel, which lasted the complete downwind leg to the finish. We snuck in a very quick gybe 25 yards from the finish which caught them off guard as we swapped positions to do it – I took the new sheet instead of moving from the grinding position to foredeck which they were watching for as a clue to us being about to gybe. We managed to surf one last wave to the finish and by under sheeting the kit we were able to project it over the finish at the favoured end of the line.

At the start of the second race during pre start manoevres, Tiburon protested us for tacking in their water onto starboard. The mainsheet fine tune block broken during the incident and therefore the coarse mainsheet unreaved itself from all the boom blocks. The boom remained on the port side, which suggested to me that the main had filled heavily while we were on starboard and that Tiburon was therefore burdened boat as it established overlap rom beind on our windward quarter. I fixed the mainsheet by lashing the fine tube to the boom strap thus allowing me to rereave the coarse tune. This time I tied a knot in the coarse tune close to where I reattached it to the fine tune so that if the fine tune again disconnected itself (as it was tide on with Kev cord) it would not unreave itself as the end would not pass through the boom block. On the last leg downwind to the finish we were on starboard and Tiburon gybed onto port and not being able to pass ahead of us luffed up to pass our stern. In the process, their spinnaker hit our backstay as a puff of wind heeled them towards us. We set our protest flag immediately.

Back ashore outside the protest room one of the Tiburon crew was abusive to me after we won both protests – he believed we had lied in the protest room about the way they had flow their flag. However, they had stated themselves that it was hard to unfurl their flag from teh backstay as tape was securing it and therefore had not flown it until as least 45 seconds after the incident had occureed which automatically meant the protest was invalid. The jury had also seen a video of the incident and stated that there had been no infringement of the rules by us and that we had completed our tack in good time.

The race committee finally rectified the results; they had omitted to award us third place for race 1 and to double the points of the middle distance race.

‘The Sydney 41 Glama! owned by Seth Radow T-boned the Farr 40 Zamboni in what appears to have been a classic port and starboard gone wrong. Glama! apparently saw Zamboni and tried, but failed to bear away, hitting the Farr just where the cabin and cockpit join and bashing a considerable hole in both topsides and deck. More seriously Zamboni’s owner Dough Taylor, steering, was flung from the wheel to the front end of the cockpit and suffered a bad gash to the head. He was taken off and delivered to a waiting ambulance, but was reported in satisfactory condition on arrival at the hospital.”