Two Man Round North Island- Leg 2 - Waka's Report

by Josh Tucker on 3 Mar 2008 Waka reports on Leg 2 of the Two Man Round North Island Race from Mongonui to Wellington:

An off the wind start to the 2nd leg meant it was gennakers set straight off the line. We got away cleanly, gybing around the pin end and hoisting the reaching gennaker. As soon as it set we were off! We led the fleet out of Mangonui with Akatea right behind and Ran tan and andar slipping through to leeward at pace. We decided that we had made a bad call with the reacher so did a quick change to the running gennaker almost trawling the kite in the process! It was one of those occasions where we fully outsmarted ourselves!

Finally with the right kite on we took off and starting putting time on the fleet behind. At the next headland we dropped and went to the jibtop to get past the fickle winds under the headland. Once in clear air we hoisted the fractional gennaker and went low and fast. We were 20 degree low on course but doing 10?12kts! I was counting on it lifting as we got closer to North cape.

This payed off and we ended up going around the cape in 3rd spot with only the open 50 and the canting 50 ahead. Akatea and Bushido ended up slowing mowing us down and got ahead about half way across the top. Everyone kept heading offshore on port tack but we decided to tack inside pandora?s Bank and make the most of the 1.5kts of tide that was with us for another 3 hrs.

In the 7.30am sched we were still in 3rd place so pretty happy to have made gains on the wind where we would normally be loosing out. The southerly ended up slowly dying out during the day and by midday we were totally becalmed. This 'parkup' lasted for the next 2 days as we made very slow progress down the coast. We were the inshore boat out of the pack but still about 50nm offshore.

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