JJ Giltinan 18fters- Series leader Yamaha battles in Race 3 aftermath

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 1 Mar 2017 The fourth race of the JJ Giltinan 2017 18fter Championship was less eventful than Tuesday's four seasons in the one-day affair.

In that third race, Yamaha NZ who had won the first two races of the seven race series, was involved in a collision with another boat and retired, but was granted redress in a protest committee hearing on Wednesday morning.

The damage from the incident affected the New Zealand champion in the fourth race, coupled with some unfamiliarity with their rarely used No.1 rig, which got its first outing on Sydney Harbour.

Yamaha and other members of the New Zealand team at the prestigious regatta are trying to break a 43 year droughtto win the JJ Giltinan Trophy for the first time since 1974 and achieve the first ever win by a New Zealand crew on Sydney harbour.

Yamaha finished second in last year's event - missing the win by just one point and start the 2017 event in fine form, winning the first two races in convincing fashion - in fresher breezes with their trusty and versatile No. 2 rig.

'We used our big rig obviously today - even though we didn't have our vang adjustment numbers sorted for that rig after the vang broke in the collision yesterday,' skipper Dave McDiarmid said. 'It normally takes six months to get those numbers sorted.'

'We did a couple of pre-start lineups, and the setup felt good. We got a good start - Riley Dean in Knight Frank (NZ) got an even better start (but was OCS).

'We tacked over onto port after the start and started getting rolled as we were sailing extremely slow.'

'We went slow the whole beat, but still managed to round about fifth at the top. The breeze had also freshened at that stage to around 10kts.'

'The course wasn't great for the wind direction of ESE, and we all struggled to get to the wing mark with chutes on.'

Australian Navy takes wind
Next issue for the fleet was a large Australian naval vessel which passed through to windward of the fleet as the leaders rounded the bottom mark.

'She was a big obstacle, and we had to gybe a couple of times to get to the bottom mark. But the biggest problem came with her disturbed air on the next beat.

'She sent the wind all over the place - massive shifts, massive lulls, you couldn't see what was coming - it was just horrendous.

'We picked our way through that - everyone was battling with it obviously - Riley was smoking as he was out in front.

'We finished fifth in the end which felt like it wasn't too bad all things considered.'

More on Race 3 redress
The incident in Race 3 happened after C-Tech rolled over the top of Yamaha on the first downwind leg.

'C-Tech gybed onto port for no apparent reason and hit us.'

'We went bow to bow and rack to rack - grinding carbon, and we came out with a lot of broken stuff.

'I got hit into the middle of the boat. I don't know how we avoided capsizing in the collision.'

The snap shackle on our vang broke, and we didn't have any control of the boat whatsoever.

'I wasn't trapezeing at the time and our crew, Matt and Brad, just ran back and forth trying to make the best out of a bad situation.'

'Then we capsized, and that was it.'

'We were just on the edge of the rain squall when we had the collision. It wasn't that windy when we had the collision, but after that, I had no control over the boat at all.'

'I had a whole lot of kite in my face and blocking my view, and we were just trying to survive.'

McDiarmid thought they had not yet been hit by the rain squall which hit in a few seconds, more than doubling the windspeed to over 22kts and with torrential rain. The squall seems to have hit just after they capsized during a gybe a few boat lengths after the collision.

'We run fairly accurate vang settings on our boat - which we have now lost after the collision and replacement of the multi-part vang.'

'The vang tune is very fine with only a 10mm adjustment between on and off over a four part multi-purchase. system.'

'We now have to try and figure out how to sail the boat upwind with the replacement vang and that rig. We can't get any height.'

Dusting off No.1 rigs
'The other issue is that we have hardly used the No. 1 rig for the past season - which compounded the vang calibration issue.'

'We thought we had prepared properly before the start. In hindsight, we probably should have done better preparing the boat. It wasn't until we got started in the race that we realised we were battling to stay with the top boats.

After the race, McDiarmid says they have altered the vang so that it is closer to the system they need. With their smaller No. 2 rig which served them well for their first two race wins, McDiarmid believes they should not have the same issues.

Wind strength was hugely variable. 'Sometimes it was 12-13kts, others there was holes in the breeze, and we were standing in the middle of the boat, waiting for the wind. It was a standard easterly course but with the wind a little more right than usual ESE. Before the start, it looked to be more consistent than it usually is from that direction.

'Our biggest mistake was rigging for that condition, rather than a standard easterly. It's also a lot easier sailing in the front in clear air, like we had in the first two races, than back in the pack as we were today.'

'We will go back to setting up for the wind being lighter than it appears to be.'

McDiarmid says jumping the start by Knight Frank was 'extremely unfortunate' as they were sailing well and a second place would have lifted well them up the points table.

Currently, with their race 3 scored at average points, Yamaha still leads the series by .67pts from the winner of Race 4, Thurlow Fisher (Michael Coxon), the current Australian champion.

Race 5 will start around 3.00pm local time on Thursday.