It was a great day for sailing last Saturday when Batemans Bay Sailing Club held the annual Waverider Mark race. This course went from a start in the middle of the Bay upwind to the Toll Gates mark and hence out to the Waverider Mark 3 nautical miles off North Head.
It was a rare sunny day with a gentle sea breeze.
An ebbing tide made the Clyde River bar crossing a little tricky. A couple of the boats engaged in some keel polishing on the way out. Race officer Terry Paton and his trusty sidekick Steve Masterton set an excellent start line. "Accolade" (Lachlan Brown) and "Hobo" (Peter Withington) started at the pin while the other 3 boats, "Moonmist" (Geoff Perrem), "Wishful Thinking" (Simon Dunlop) and "Xanthia" (James Gardiner) started at the boat end.
"Accolade" led narrowly at the Tollgates mark then tacked on top of "Moonmist" to force her to tack away to the right hand side of the course. However, "Moonmist" was going faster upwind and was able to repay the favour close to the Waverider mark. "Wishful" took a good
line into the top mark and assumed the lead, pulling away from "Moonmist" on the broad reach down to the Marine Park mark off Black Rock. "Moonmist" had set a rather small heavy weather spinnaker which also allowed "Accolade" past.
The next leg was a fetch back around the seaward side of the Tollgate Islands before another broad reach back to the finish line off Caseys Beach. The "Xanthia" crew deployed her massive asymmetric spinnaker to good effect on the last leg to get past "Moonmist" and make up ground on "Accolade".
"Wishful" had a clear win on line honours while on PHS it was the mighty "Xanthia" showing what a good light air boat she can be. In Division 2 "Hobo" scored a convincing victory. Full results are up on the BBSC website www.bbsc.org.au.
The next BBSC keelboat race will be a Bay Cup race on March 26th.
Above: the fleet taken just after the start (photo credit Terry Paton)
