JJ Giltinan 18fters - Fired up Yamaha gives another sailing lesson

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 4 Mar 2017 'We got angry, and we smoked them' was Yamaha skipper Dave McDiarmid's summary of their end to end win in Race 6 of the JJ Giltinan 18ft Championship.

The win was the New Zealand crew's third from six races, all by substantial margins. Today's was a massive 3minutes 45 seconds in the 95-minute race sailed in an SSE breeze and rain.

'We're obviously pretty disappointed with the events of the last couple of days. We have won half our races, and we should have received redress for another race. We would have won the regatta.'

That's a reference to the 'now you have it, now you don't' situation over the awarding of redress to the New Zealand Champion for an incident in Race 3 of the championship when they were forced to withdraw with a broken boom vang after a collision with another New Zealand boat, C-Tech.

After being awarded redress of average points at a Hearing on Tuesday, that was reversed after the Protest Committee viewed the video coverage of the Race following a further redress claim by Appliancesonline (David Witt).

A fired up Yamaha crew made a slingshot start off the pin end of the line and took the lead in the opening stanzas of the first beat and were never headed in the miserable conditions.

'Soon after clearing the start line, we did pretty much what we did in Race 2 - just put our bow down and started sending it.'

'We sailed straight past Rags like they were standing still.'

'We are a significant step ahead of the Australians in those conditions, at the moment.'

The big picture is that counting the final two races of the 2016 JJ Giltinan Trophy - where Yamaha won both races, the New Zealand crew has won five races of the eight sailed.

Yamaha's ace is her No.2 rig which has an extreme range from 8kts to 25kts and above and is a combination of which the rest of the fleet appeared to have no answer in moderate to fresh conditions.

A big swell was a feature of the racing today as the course ran close to Sydney Heads. 'The boat felt really strange in those conditions and sea state. We played it safe there and didn't push too hard, just trying to get around the mark without incident.'

'It was hard to know if we were in a yacht race or surfing contest. We were going upwind sitting on these massive swells. It's just another thing that Sydney throws up. '

'The front group got close to us heading into Rose Bay, but then we just put the hammer down and gassed them.'

While the had their work cut out at the front of the fleet, bowman Brad Collins ('Triple B' or 'Big Bad Brad'), decided before the race that the arms on his wetsuit had shrunk and cut slits in them which opened up during the race.

' After the first run he couldn't feel his hands, so he pulled the wetsuit right back, so he had bare arms. It was a bit weird sailing in those conditions with someone ripping their wetsuit apart!'

'Today was a tough day for the bowman with plenty of hoists and often drops several times of the same leg.'

Despite the big wins, McDiarmid doesn't think Yamaha is any faster than the other top boats. 'When we are in the flat water, we are fast, but in the bumpy stuff, Rags and Famish were eating into us.'

The comment was made that Yamaha had overlaid the first mark in Rose Bay. But McDiarmid says it was deliberate. 'We could see a solid breeze line coming down to use. Rag tacked right on the layline, we went a bit further to get into the breeze and wound up reaching over the top of Rags on the final approach to the mark. '

Forecast for the final race on Sunday is for the same, maybe an even fresher breeze.

McDiarmid expects to be back in the protest room before the start of the race - his competitors will be hoping the Protest Committee don't get him too fired up.