PIC Coastal Classic - TeamVodafoneSailing first home to Russell

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZL on 23 Oct 2015 The ORMA60 TeamVodafoneSailing has finished the 2015 PIC Coastal Classic, crossing the line off Russell just before 7.30pm.

Earlier, at at report at 1700hrs she had 42nm of sailing distance ahead of her.

Soon after Sail-World recorded The ORMA60's 5.00pm position, from the race tracker, it seemed that TeamVodafoneSailing had stopped reporting - being quite well out to sea, and in a dead-hole for communications on the isolated area of the Northland coast. She did come back on line before the race finish and the stored position data was uploaded.

The course routing done for Teamvodafonesailing around 5.00pm showed she had two options - taking the coastal route (favoured by three of the four feeds) or standing out off the Northland coast and approaching in a single tack. From her track it seems that the latter course was taken - avoiding the wind shadow of Cape Brett.



The routing function of Predictwind forecasted a finish time for the ORMA60 of around 7.30pm, and on that basis she will have taken over 9hrs for the 108nm trip - well outside her 2014 record of 5hrs 13 mins.

She had a straight run up the Bay of Islands from Cape Brett hitting speeds of over 30kts. She hit similar speeds in the early stages of the race taking just 30 minutes to get from the start off Devonport Wharf to Tiri Passage - a distance of around 15nm.

The team have reported that a winch blew up about 2.00pm and its load is being taken by an adjacent winch.

Keep up to date with the rest of the fleet using the Predictwind Tracker http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/race/nzmyc