Great night at the Devonport Yacht Club. Blink won line honours - fastest boat around the North Island of NZ (7days 11hours:51mins:02secs) (Elliott Marine Line Honours Cup). Blink is the smallest boat to win that cup. Blink also won 3rd on PHRF overall, second on PHRF for Division 1 and first on line for Division 1.
First up, a clip from seven hours of fast, comfortable sailing with a heavy jib and double-reefed mainsail, in 30-40 knots northwesterly, between Taranaki and Wellington. Boatspeed rarely dropped below 15 knots although top speeds not much over 20.
At the same time as this Bushido with a fractional code zero up were averaging just one knot faster than us, once we realised we did the same and added 2-3 knots of boat speed and started making ground on them.
This is from just after the start, leaving North Head in Auckland. Despite the conservative start we are getting near the front of the fleet here.
Leading the fleet towards Kawau, under masthead code zero
Leading the fleet towards Napier, sunset over the Wairarapa coast
Just after we rounded Colville, wind in the mid-30-knot range. Within an hour it was up into the mid-40s and we had to drop the jib and sail bare-headed under main alone for a while. The waves were surprisingly big (they always look smaller in photos/videos) given the limited fetch of the Hauraki Gulf, and of course larger as the wind built.
On the way up to North Cape, Code 0 flying again in 15-20 knots on the beam
And lastly a clip from a magical half-hour of light breeze, moonlight, sunset, dolphins... but at the limits of what the camera can capture so the video is a bit dark...
