210207ebopvtnzreport

Hi all,

A quick update on the regatta last Saturday which was held on the Tauranga pond at “The Lakes”, Tauriko. The venue was set up with some market canopies erected to give some shade for the competitors.

EBOP attendees were Russell, Alan, Denis and Basil. When Russell and Alan arrived they were a bit awe struck to see the guys rigging up their ‘big flash’ IOM's and the three DF95’s. They all looked so professional and we felt a little daunted. However we sorted our gear, registered, and got ourselves to the 10am briefing. It was good to hear that Graham was to be the race RO for the DF65’s and the one Electron in the ‘little boat’ division. From the jetty and boardwalk the DF65’s and Electron were to the left and on a separate course to the right were the larger boats which also included two foiling catamarans.

Wind varied in both strength and direction and our course started the day with off the wind starts. Basil arrived in the nick of time for the first race, a bit after 10:30am and was still getting to grips with tuning his new boat with the red hull. Denis arrived from Opotiki a little later in time to start in race 4. The regatta was 12 races, mostly back to back, with the best 10 to count averaged out to give a final placing.

All credit to Denis as he had experienced severe cracking in his black boat after our Rotoma day with a lot of water getting in. However Alan managed to courier him a new bright yellow hull which arrived during Thursday. All the gear was transferred over to the new hull by Friday and ready to race on Saturday when the final tuning had to take place while racing. We had some space between racing for ’tweeks’ to the tuning and it was after a race or two that Denis discovered that his rudder servo wasn’t quite centred when the rudder went into the new hull. This was rectified with an allen key from a fellow competitor and 'Team Eastern BOP' got serious.

Russell continued to improve as the day went on but Alan had a couple of “oh @#$% races as the afternoon heat kicked in but came to the fore again in the last race which was a long one. The OD decided to send us from our start line well to the left upwind end of the course and then a very long downwind leg which took us a long way down the lake through the bigger boat course which had completed racing. Then a long upwind beat which saw Alan footing it with the Electron putting in several long boards which had them both well off to the far side of the lake in good pressure, and then with a good reach back to the finish line. Meanwhile #168 and #174 had tacked up the nearer shore showing local knowledge and saw #168 across the line first with Alan about a boat length behind and #174 hot behind that.

It was interesting to see the Electron sailing and I guess it generally had the legs on us with probably a bigger sail plan and longer waterline length, resulting in it leading the field (and frequently getting in the way) of the DF65 fleet. From some of the grumbles it seems that it wasn’t the first time it sailed with the DF65’s like a battleship.

Prize Giving was held and everyone went away with something from the table,

thanks to the sponsors.

"VTNZ Tauranga" - get your wof at VTNZ Meleme St

"Radio Yacht Supplies" in Mount Maunganui, thanks Antony

Dusty at "Dragonforce Yacht Nz"

Overall it was good to see that our Eastern Bay sailors were able to hold our own against the Tauranga crews, and the Papamoa sailors were generally conspicuous by the absence.

I think that it’s time we paid them a visit also.

Looking forward now to next year.

Full results for all divisions can be seen at https://sites.google.com/site/tgarsc/vtnz-2021-results

Cheers, Alan