Saturday 9th October dawned bright and clear with a good steady NE’ly F5-6. 16 boats were entered for this very popular 2-day event in the DBYC Calendar...
With the windward mark kindly set by Bart Kimman on the AYS safety boat, the first start was timed for Div B at 1100. The Sipadan committee boat junior crew of Stephanie, Lucie, Megan and Eve manned the flags & horn to carry out a text book start countdown with admirable precision. There should have been 8 boats jostling for position on the line, but no-one was anywhere near… perhaps they were finishing their last coffee to remedy the excesses of the Bilge Bar the night before (rumour has it most of the Square Bear crew had jumped on to a speedboat to go to McDonalds). A couple of minutes later, the rest of Div B staggered away.
At 1110, another punctual and crisp set of signals which Mrs Commodore (who’s Swiss) was very proud of. Surely Div A would be on top form and show how to cut the start fine, with bows on the line at the gun? Not today, the Hammonds were still wearing sunglasses from the night before, Authority under a press-ganged crew were blaming wind shifts and Xakanaxa were mumbling about losing crew to the overmanned Legs 11 (more like Legs 22).
Race 1 was from DB - Middle Island, keeping Hei Ling Chau, Cheung Chau Rock, Lamma Island and Round Island to port. The wind favoured the larger boats and Square Bear was off to a strong position at the head of the fleet. The larger boats: Kei Lun, Xakanaxa, Chota Seye, Aegean and Authority all made good progress round the first marks and off to South Lamma. In Div B, Shockwave and Sotally Tober valiantly tried to keep up with the fleet, with S-T having aspirations of being a much larger ketch like Epic (this time for once, Neale had more than just Andrea to do all the hard work).
The stronger winds favoured the larger boats and the race was significantly quicker than in previous years - apart from Allegro whose skipper had mistaken last year’s SI’s for this, deciding the rest of the fleet was wrong and so insisted on rounding Chesterman Rock as well...
The finish was a tight affair with Kei Lun taking line honours, closely followed by Authority, Chota Seye and Legs 22. Authority clawed back two places in the last 50 meters.
Once again DBYC were warmly welcomed by the staff at Aberdeen Boat Club, who co-sponsor this event each year. The crews welcomed the cold beers provided by Carlsberg, our generous beverage sponsor, and fuelled by the first beers the tall tales started to be told of opportunities missed, navigational embarrassments, lost and broken equipment (all on Sotally Tober), speeds logged (all double digits, of course) and how generous boats had been to others in giving way and allowing them the advantage. The evening continued in fancy dress with most wearing costumes fitting the theme of Greek Gods (some Roman Legionaries were spotted - time travellers no doubt) and Mama-Mia to fit in with the Greek background of the movie that was due to be shown but which went missing!
The Greek banquet was fantastic with whole spit-roast lambs, a massive salmon that the Commodore/ Posiedon, caught off the back of Sipadan whilst taking a short cut to the finish (special privilege). The ABC clubhouse was a superb venue for this lovely evening and was attended by over 60 DBYC members and friends.
Sunday morning, gusting over 25knots, we had to hold down our plates of bacon and egg as we refueled the crews for the pursuit race home. The start was set outside Round Island by the ABC committee boat for us to get a flying start down to Chesterman before crossing the Lamma channel and a southerly rounding of Lamma and back to DB.
It wasn’t long before some skippers were in trouble. On Sipadan, Mrs Commodore was enquiring why we were only 10 minutes late getting to the line @#$&*! And on Allegro the skipper was still arguing that he had already rounded Chesterman the previous day and so should be excempted on the race back. Square Bear who “surprisingly” had a clean sweep of the medals on Race 1 was out to prove a point and used the strong wind to full advantage and extended a big lead on the rest of the fleet. Once the larger boats started picking off the early starters it wasn’t clear whether there would enough time to haul back Square Bear. The wind held good all the way to the finish and despite a valiant chase by Xakanaxa, Kei Lun and No One Else, Square Bear managed to hold the lead for a clean sweep of Gold medals for MIR10. Well done, Team Bundy!
The podium results:
WITH WARM THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS...
DBYC is indebted to our sponsors who support our events very generously:
DISCOVERY BAY YACHT CLUB, ABERDEEN BOAT CLUB, ASIA YACHT SERVICES, CARLSBERG, OCEAN PARK & THE GLOBE RESTAURANT
