After several days of strong nor’easters, Sunday dawned with a light and uninspiring breeze that sailors hoped would “come in” over the afternoon for Port Macquarie Sailing Club’s 5^th Handicap Start Race of the season.

With the handicapper conspicuously absent, it was amazing how quickly short-term memory loss led to some wild guesses on each skipper’s previous handicap start time. Eventually, some start times were decided, and the race started on the run-in tide with about 8 knots of easterly wind.

Steve Couch in Lazybuoy and Andrew and Kieran Copeland in Big Bang took the first start slot for the monohulls together with Jack Corthals on Crackerjack which was the only catamaran on the day.

The Impulse fleet, consisting of Terry Howard in Flying Dragon, Martina Holt in Spellbound, Andrew Richards in Impulsive and prospective new member Mitchell Dawson in Impetuous, all conspired to take the same start time. Warren Sykes in Runamuck was relegated to a later start time following his recent winning form.

Simon Gandy, Kate and Chelsea Copeland in Voyager and Stuart Symons and Adam Pilcher in Elmo took later starts and tried to chase down Big Bang.

Elsa Gandy and Zoe Copeland in Up Beat and Steve and Lucy Bohlsen in Interceptor appeared to have a close race despite an additional handicap on Interceptor as the forward hand kept dipping into the water on the trapeze. (Well, it was a hot, humid day.)

Roger Shipton on Zazoo was late to the party, running home to rig up after the briefing instead of the other way around which is more traditional. Thankfully the club is not considering a Le Mans start series in future.  

Throughout the race the wind was tricky with some nice NE puffs, but holes and direction changes aplenty. Interceptor setup the kite for a nice downwind run only to have the wind change to come from in front and have to pull down the spinnaker. Five minutes later the wind was behind again.

At the finish line, the monohull results were: Lazybuoy, Flying Dragon, Spellbound, Big Bang, Impulsive, Voyager, Elmo, Up Beat, Interceptor, Zazoo, Runamuck, and Impetuous.

Crackerjack took the points for the catamaran division.

Next week will be the first double-header of the summer season featuring Race 2 starting at 11am and the 4^th Club Championship starting at 2pm. A barbecue lunch will be available in between races. Terry Howard is rostered on duty.