Cock of the Huon

This weekend was the opening of the Tassie yacht racing season and as Jeff's new yacht is still coming from France we used our boat instead to contest the Cock of the Huon race with Jeff on the helm, Rob and Cade on the winches and myself on the fore deck .
We had a great day and ended up with a 2nd on corrected time in our class of seven boats in a fleet of 28 boats.
Flew a spinnaker on her for the first time and pretty much had a trouble free run

Hi Bigfred

Not sure what a difference it made as we locked in place on the mooring and sailed her off and didn't use the engine until after the race

The next time we go out I might do the same thing and when we are in a constant breeze knock her into neutral, let the prop spin and see what it does to the speed

Regards Don

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Chris 249 said..
You were up with some much faster (theoretically) boats in the first pics - well done!

Hi Chris

This is how we ended up in the division 3 rankings

The only boats on the list that i know are Obsession which is a Doven 30 and Stardust Dancer which is a Marauder 27

True Blue is a local boat of about 27 feet but she is fairly light and does well in light breezes

All of the others are Hobart boats

Regards Don

Congrats Donk! She looks great in the pics mixing it up with the fleet :)
Foredeck? You rebel you!
What is Jeffs French boat may I ask?

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riverider said..
You don't see many of the red triangle sailmaker logos these days, but the spinnaker still looks ok, it would have to be at least 40+ years since George Pickers made one of those.

Hi Riverider

I took it to the local sail maker down here to do a couple of small repairs on it and it has a tag on it saying 1977 when it was measured and and another saying 1992 when it was measured again

The boat was built in 1983 and i think it still has the original sails on it so a new set of sails would probably make her go a bit better

She did a nice repair on it but said she would be careful using it in to strong a breeze as it had a bit of age to it

Before the race we hoisted Jeffs small spinnaker from his previous Jenneau that was 1.2 meters longer in the luff than mine to see how it would work and it set ok but we decided to use mine in the race and i think we flew it about 4 times in the 2 laps

The only thing that goes back to the cockpit on mine is the mainsheet and everthing else is at the mast so with hoisting and dropping sails on the weekend and playing with the pole topping lift and down haul as well as packing the spinnaker i was fairly busy up front on the weekend but had a lot of fun

Mine is fairly flat and we carried it shy a lot of the time and it seemed to work ok

Regards Don

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shaggybaxter said..
Congrats Donk! She looks great in the pics mixing it up with the fleet :)
Foredeck? You rebel you!
What is Jeffs French boat may I ask?

Hi Shaggy

The new boat is a Jenneau 349 (not as exotic as your Pogo unfortunately) to replace the previous Jenneau 33I Performance that went pretty well in the races down here

There is a new Doyle Stratis Ice square top main being made for her and the main and 2 Stratis Ice head sails off the previous boat are being modified to suit the new one so we will have a few sails to play with and hopefully she will go ok

My current spinnaker is 10300 mm up the luff and 5800 mm across the foot if you have anything that might work let me know what you are asking for them

I was quite happy to be up the front and let Jeff call the shots on the weekend as he is much more experienced than me (75 in a few days time and has been sailing all his life) and is regarded as one of the best helmsman in Tassie and is a top bloke

Regards Don

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riverider said..

Donk107 said..

riverider said..
You don't see many of the red triangle sailmaker logos these days, but the spinnaker still looks ok, it would have to be at least 40+ years since George Pickers made one of those.

Hi Riverider

I took it to the local sail maker down here to do a couple of small repairs on it and it has a tag on it saying 1977 when it was measured and and another saying 1992 when it was measured again

The boat was built in 1983 and i think it still has the original sails on it so a new set of sails would probably make her go a bit better

She did a nice repair on it but said she would be careful using it in to strong a breeze as it had a bit of age to it

Before the race we hoisted Jeffs small spinnaker from his previous Jenneau that was 1.2 meters longer in the luff than mine to see how it would work and it set ok but we decided to use mine in the race and i think we flew it about 4 times in the 2 laps

The only thing that goes back to the cockpit on mine is the mainsheet and everthing else is at the mast so with hoisting and dropping sails on the weekend and playing with the pole topping lift and down haul as well as packing the spinnaker i was fairly busy up front on the weekend but had a lot of fun

Mine is fairly flat and we carried it shy a lot of the time and it seemed to work ok

Regards Don

I sailed on a few boats in JOGs in the 80s & 90s, don't remember a sailmaster, may have bought it 2nd hand off another boat by the sounds of things, did it have a number on it ?
We owned a boat that used to run that colour scheme on the spinnakers, but can't remember one that George made.

Hi Riverider

My boat was originally called Aqua-Fae (same as now) and was originally from Port Huon but went up to Beauty Point in 1984 and was raced and cruised there until the early 1990's

She than was bought back to Hobart by a guy called Spud Tate (Jeff thinks he raced Dragons) who renamed her Addiction and kept her at the DSS and i bought her a couple of years ago off his widow and changed her name back to Aqua-Fae and bought her back to Port Huon

There has been a number on the spinnaker (it still has sticky stuff on it) but i am not what it was

Regards Don