Race Log: 14th of Feb

Weather: 5~10 knots, a couple of stronger gusts, Southerly Breeze

Course Notes: Port Course, 2 big laps, 4 smaller laps. 

Start: Starting at course boat end, pin favoured, didn’t loose out to much except for the first 2 boats off the pin. End of the day the course boat is still favoured on Albert Park. 

First Beat: Worked the side of the island, and kept to the south east of the fountain. Seemed to be successful most of the race. 

Course Notes: Didn’t venture to fair into the narrows followed the ‘Haintz’ route of staying towards the eastern wall. This was strengthened by the erection of a number of marquees along the western wall next to Carousel. 

Had to tack near the entrance of the narrows, but didn’t loose much ground. Caught up to Chris who went into the leg with a 4~5 boat length lead, got caught up Rod who had a good run past the tree. Next leg (run out of the narrows) got caught up by a number of boats, 5 of us rounded the bottom mark together. 

Upwind was where you could make a decent break from the fleet. Worked hard at keeping the boat level in the stronger breeze and nailing each tack. At the top mark only Ken was close to me. After the pursuit through the narrows Ken and I had pulled out a significant lead which meant we had little worry from the rest of the fleet. 

With the wind easing off it became harder and harder to keep up with Ken. Ken made good ground, especially taking lifts off of the point restaurant. The island was still favoured and Ken didn’t make the mistake of going into what I consider a ‘no go zone’.

Of course on Albert Park Lake the first rule is that you don’t make rules. But in general if you use the fountain as a guide (the little white dot in the picture above) you should always try to go between the island and fountain in a southerly breeze.

I hope to have usable GPS log of the race up in the next couple of days.