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Musket Cove Regatta: Races 2 & 3: 2023

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Part II of the Musket Cove Regatta 2023.  Be sure to read Part I: Musket Cove Regatta: Pirate Day 2023.  Day 2 of the regatta is a “down day” and meant to be onshore for the games, activities, and hobbie cat races.  But Day 3 is the famed Around the Island Race.

If you might recall last year, on the sailboat “Wow” we had to leave the race without finishing because we tore the jib.  This year we were determined to simply go all the way around the island.  The problem is we did not have a boat to crew on.

Luck of the draw…we met this boat called “Wings” in Viani Bay a few weeks prior to the regatta.  They shipped “Wings” their beautiful 46′ Dehler from Austrlia to California so they could participate in the prestigous Transpac Race (California to Hawaii).  After they finished the race, they sailed from Hawaii to Fiji which is where we met them.  The race course around the island.

Racing on “Wings”

Ian, the owner was gracious enough to invite Matt and I on to their boat for the Around the Island race.  We were thrilled to be back in the game!  Even though this is a really sleek racing boat, I was not sure how well we would do.  I just wanted to finish!

Wings is made for racing and Ian takes her all over the world to compete.  In the top photo Wings has her racing sails up but for the Musket Cove regatta she used her standard ‘working sails.’

Well equiped and ready to race with easily visible instruments, and key performance indicator sheets.

The Race Photographer captured some great shots of Wings while underway.

Ian, being the master race captain, positioned us perfectly at the start line and we were the first to cross.  It was a packed start as we all were tacking up the narrow channel in a fight for air and position.

The crew: Ian, David, Mark, Alissa, Janesse, Matt and I.  Yes, it looks like we are hardly working, but the only time I can take photos is when we have a “lull”  It becomes super difficult to stop and take photos during a tack or jibe.

As it turns out, we were the 2nd monohull to cross the line.  We won’t know for sure until the awards ceremony, but we are 99.99% confiendt we came in second.

The Sandbank Race

The next day, 3 of the 4 crew members decided to go surfing.  Ian, asked if Matt and I wanted to fill in and we decided “why not?”  Of course, we don’ know 1/10 of what his crew does, but we muddled through it the best we could.

The Sandbank race is short and usually has very little wind.  Making it challenging to get this heavy boat to move.  Our start was not as good as the day before, but we made the best of it.  This is the race course:

We certainly did not do as well as we did on the Around the Island race, with little wind, and short 3 crew, but we sure did have fun!

Awards Ceremony

Wings came in 2nd in the prestigous Around the Island Race.  We won tons of prizes.  Matt and I received a bottle of champagn, a new hat, and a $100 fuel voucher.  We then won several drawings.  We got 2 months of free internet from Vodafone, 1 year professional subscription from PredictWind, and we won a huge bag full of wine, goodies, and more.  

Our crew on Wings and Salty.

We had many beautiful sunsets where the anchor lights dot the sky making it look like falling stars.

Soem Fijian Love

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind live events.  This event occurred early September.  In our last blog we get down and dirty as pirates.

Musket Cove Regatta: Around the Island Race

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The Around the Island Race is the most serious and competitive race of the Musket Cove Regatta week.  The course takes the racers around two islands, inside the reef, Malolo and Castaway  where the boats will see winds coming from all directions.  It is a challenging race with lots of boats trying to out maneuver their competitors in small sailing grounds around dangerous coral reefs.

Around the Island Race

Around the Island Race

Our captain, Dave is feeling confident in his boat and his team.  He is a big racer and very competitive.  He has raced his boat “Wow” several times in many challenging races and won most of them.

In order to make his already light boat lighter, he empties his water tanks, leaves his dinghy, anchor chain and anchor behind at the anchorage.  All to lighten the weight of the boat to make her go faster.  We then change the working sails to the “racing sails” and prepare the code zero and spinnaker on deck.   The captain is prepared to win the Around the Island Race.

There are 24 boats competing in the race but another 10-12 boats are participating and clogging up the course.   The start is tricky as you can go on either side of a sand bank when the horn blows.  Nobody can use anything other than working sails (until 5 minutes after the race starts).  This is to give the boats a chance to get through a narrow portion of the course without having huge head sails out.

The Start: Around the Island Race

We had a rough start and picked the wrong side of the start line.  We got between two boats and had to give way to get past a reef.  Then we got stuck in the wind shadow of a large monohull and could not pass for a good 10 minutes (which is a lifetime in a race)

It was our fault for coming up on their leeward side, if we had room we would have come up on their windward side and stole their air.  But

We were in 5th place at this point (30 minutes into the race) and were finally given enough space to overtake the monohull (who later one first place for monohulls). You can see our jib luffing as the dirty wind comes past the other boat.

We started to round the corner by Castaway and were putting out the code zero when we noticed we had a huge problem!  The top of the jib had a severe tear in it.   The code zero (which is a large head sail) was already being launched and then we furled the jib. 

We had to evaluate our options.  We knew as we rounded the Malolo island we would be directly into the wind and would need our jib.  The code zero and spinnaker are for downwind and or reaching.  With no way to finish, we decided to turn the engines on, turn around and head back to the anchorage.  It was a DNF for us and we were the only boat to not finish.  Really disappointing.  

We really had a bad day as we all made bad decisions that caused delays and set backs.  But it was a good learning experience.  Just unfortunate that we are no longer contenders for the “Around the Island Race.”

Winners

I will say that the race could have been organized a lot better, in my humble opinion.  They only had 2 categories: monohulls and multihulls.  The problem with that is they had 3 local hobie cat boats (that are not “live aboard”) enter the race.  They are super small, light, and very agile.  Live aboard boats just can’t compete against these boats at all (considering we have beds, galleys, toilets, refrigeration). 

But it was a proud moment for Fijians as the top three spots went to locals.  Each of these boats finished the race in under 1 hr 35min and the next cruising boat (live aboard) finished a full 25 minutes after.

All in all, it was a good race day, nobody got hurt and everyone had fun.  In our next blog we try to redeem ourselves in the sandbank race.

Damage to the Jib

Once we got back we were able to assess the damage to the very expensive racing jib.  The top seam delaminated and the next seam down seemed well on its way to doing the same thing.  We couldn’t have done anything during the Around the Island Race.

Even the photos at the start of the race showed the compromised sail.

 

The events from this blog occurred in early September 2022.  Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual events.  We win the first race, the beachcomber race, in the Musket Cove Regatta 2022.