Spring Round

Jeff and Melissa wait for the 'Start' signal

We had great weather for The Spring Round Island Race; a steady east wind. Janet was PRO and set a course with a start at 'Spadina'. The upwind leg would be through the habour and the downwind leg would be on the south side Centre Island from the Eastern Gap entrance to Gibraltar buoy.   The finish was near 'Dufferin'. The wind direction made for an excellent alignment for a race around Centre Island.

The class boats, e.g. Sharks, started first. The second division was for white sail. The third and last division was for boats flying spinnaker. We would be the little boat in the third division. I wanted be to close to the committee boat and stay windward of the bigger boats at the start. Our start was good but we were overtaken by the late but faster starters. We did make several attempts to tack towards the centre but we could not get clear enough ahead to avoid the need to tack back. It was only when the bigger boats had all tacked that we were clear to go on an extended port tack.

The spinacker hoist went well. We had a nice run to Gibraltor. The course after Gibraltor was a shallow broad reach. Division one and the faster boats had finished. We had caught up to the white sail division and the slower boats in our division. We kept a course windward of the remaining racers as did Jazz. We found ourselves clear astern but overtaking Jazz on the windward side of the course. I didnt want to go below them and they would not allow to pass to windward. Jazz headed up when necessary to prevent us from passing to windward, so we covered a bit of extra distance. There was a bit of banter between skippers as we scooted past Jazz to windward AFTER the finish.

Our division consisted of three boats. Diana finished first and Silver Lining was second. It was close on corrected time; if we weren't blocked by Jazz, we might have had a better placing. I would describe the Spring Round as a friendly competitive race. Although we weren't first we were competitive and we were friendly. It was an all smiles day.