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.

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 5^th 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.