The Race 2 results are in.
Made to measure for Port Phillip.
Those sylphs of Port Phillip provided another lesson why our Tumlare’s still have a strong and dedicated following. Light or heavy weather, smooth or rough seas, Port Phillip is continually told, it doesn’t matter what you throw at us, we will prevail. 3 out of the first four Race 2 placings, our Tum fleet had a great day out. By half a minute on corrected time, that great man Roger Dundas bought the heritage listed Bill Gash Red Tumlare ‘Avian’ home ahead the hard working team on George Fisscher and Michael Rhodes, ‘Boambille’.
While continual windshifts played they part in Race 2, as they do in all our race’s, watching team ‘Boambille’ over take ‘Mercedes III’ as fleet leader was an eye rubbing event. The battle between ‘Boambillee’ and ‘Mercedes III’ saw the lead change 4 times with ‘Boambille’ twice passing on spinnaker runs and ‘Mercedes III’ taking back the lead each time at the leeward mark for an eventual line honours take out over team ‘Boambille’ by 3 minutes and 8 seconds.
Back to the Tums.
Kate Solly bought ‘Ettrick’ home to take third on corrected time placing by 40 seconds over Charlie Salter who did a single handed in the manner of Dave Allen and bought home ‘Ellida’ fourth on corrected time.
Looking over the corrected times of the all finishers after the first four it indicates any mistakes on the water will show in the results. 30 seconds between ‘Mercedes III’, ‘Martini’ and ‘Pastime II’. 30 seconds between ‘Dingo’ and ‘Sayonara’ and 45 seconds between ‘Fairwinds II’, ‘Tina of Melbourne’ and ‘Loama’ tell the story how tight our racing is.
Now to the start.
’Fairwinds’ led the charge to the start line but was battling the water flow and was forced to tack on to port along with many others. The port end of the line was the place to start and most of the fleet headed towards it on starboard tack. Although ‘Mercedes III’ was closer to the line Martin Ryan read the river outflow to the nth degree and squeaked ever so close but cleanly past the pin end marker to continue on starboard and lead to the first mark.
Moment of the race.
Perhaps the moment of the race was the rules compliant take out of the fleet by ‘Bungoona’ under the helm of Cameron Dorrough, at 19A, the first turning mark. To squeeze through ‘Zephyr’ then tack under the bow of ‘Acrospire’ and hold off ‘Sayonara’ was an example of confident and not give an inch Classic Yacht racing.
Classic Yacht Racing Action
Although light winds prevailed throughout the race, close Classic Yacht racing was still happening across the fleet. ‘Windward II’ had some brief opportunities to show off her power racing capability. Earlier in the race ‘Avalon’ was also given some wind to put her two headsails to work and make up good ground on the back markers. ‘Pastime II’ worked hard to fill their big spinnaker while ‘Tina of Melbourne’ saw the need to double the Mark 20 gate and then hold off Acrospire III in the run to the finish line. Although out of the money, time wise, Andy Indrans still completed the course to give ‘Corio Vertue’ an honest race.
Handicapper action, aka sharpening the pencil.
Included in the Race 2 results tabulations are two additional columns. The numbers in these columns are part of the process used to assign a handicap for Race 3. CHC is the changed handicap calculation that weights the assigned handicap for each finisher of Race 2 against their back calculated handicap, 2/3rd to 1/3rd is the mix. The back calculated handicap yard stick for Race 2 was ‘Sayonara’. The average of the last 5 back calculated handicaps, as indicated in the second additional column, is also part of the Classic formula. In combination with these two instruments, your handicapper, who you all know and love, will then apply his guillotine, to what he deems to be high and low end performance exceptions in Race 2 and assign a handicap to each Race 3 entrant.
Below is the you tube address for a 2 minute video of our fleet working hard during the evolutions of Race 2. Thanks to Scott McDonald. Great images and another story for the international stage our Classic Yacht fleet races on.
Next Race June 3
Below is the track around yesterday’s course by ‘Acrospire III’. A lesson on how to turn 5.8 NM’s into 10.1 NM’s.
The handicapper was an on board scrutineer of ‘Acrospire III’s’ performance for Race 2. The eraser on the handicapper’s pencil will be give a work out prior to Race 3.
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