Beat It On Down the Line

We’ve been through 29 races now with the SYD40 since buying her last September and I suppose we figured we had her sorted out to some extent. And then something like this happens…

We were enjoying stunning conditions two weekends ago in the 2nd Annual Horsburgh Challenge organized by the Singapore Armed Forces Yacht Club. This is a cool weekend event that combines a 60nm passage race from SAF YC’s new facilities on Singapore’s East Coast to a lighthouse roughly 25 nm due east of Singapore in the South China Sea and back in R1. R2 is a shorter 16nm race paralleling the east coast beaches on the Sunday afternoon to conclude the event. It’s a unique racing weekend that offers Singapore sailors the chance to get offshore without spending days to do it. Kinda our one-day-SYD-HOB. You can hear the groans all the way from Sydney Harbour… oh mate.

Conditions in R1 were perfect with the 0800 start in flat water and 12 knots TWS quickly freshening to 17 to 18 knots for the assym reach across the Singapore Strait to a rounding mark that took the fleet due east towards Horsburgh Lighthouse. We rounded in 18 knots TWS and soon peeled the C3 to the C4 jib and the boat settled right down into the now increasing sea swell. By the time we rounded the Horsburgh mark (halfway point) we were in the thick of a nasty line squall with gusts hitting 30 knots. We rounded and eventually hoisted our masthead symmetric runner (see other photo looking properly upright). The boat was a dream to drive and handled all the gusts with no problems at all. We surfed the 2 to 2.5 m swells and pegged some decent speeds (16 knots). We doused and hoisted the C3 jib to head back across the Singapore Strait and went for the finish. The boat absolutely loved those conditions but we need to work on fairing the keel and rudder to get her to completely lift her skirts.

On to R2 and the whole point of these ridiculous pictures…

The waters off the beach on the east coast during the NE Monsoon are deceptively flat and calm. Why? Because the combination of hot land, rows of tall apartment buildings and strong NE winds make for some pretty challenging trimming and sail selection. R2 race was a simple reach-to-reach sprint eastward down the coast with a neat little sausage at the halfway point followed by a re-trace of our course back westward to the finish. Halfway through the first leg the wind steadily clocked aft enough to allow us – after much deliberation – an assym hoist. Or so we thought. We were looking at 130 deg TWA in flat water but with gusts hitting 22 knots as they get squirted at us from between the tall buildings on shore. Since we blew our fractional hoist in R1 we had nothing but big masthead asso’s in the bag. So we hoisted the 145 sq m AP and I’ll be buggered if within 60 seconds of hoisting that mofo we didn’t get hit with a 50 deg lifted 23 knot gust! BANG! Over we went and the guy (John Heng) holding the camera was right behind us. He laid into it with the auto-shutter and got us good. Gotta love the crew commitment to hiking though.

After we got things settled I just had to say what the fuck and carry on. Anyway, some surprisingly great sailing for Singapore which is usually well protected from the big air further north. We won overall for the weekend and survived our bruised egos… and shins and knees and, and. The boat is going well and still unveiling all kinds of fun for us – really loving it! Thanks to John Heng for his handy lens work.

Good times,
tuf-luf