Wasabi Racing NZ

Thanks for our new set. They feel better than ever!

Summer is officially here! Which means Jandal / Thong season. Stay tuned.
New is coming, soon….

It’s almost time for the wives to have to put up with us having nothing to do. Get that list of chores ready!

starting to fiz for the Royal Akarana Yacht Club 350 miler this coming friday! weathers looking sporty for the beginning of the race. Perfect conditions for Wasabi

(Predictwind, ECMWF, Gust map)

Best race of the year!! Don’t miss out!

Head over to Royal Akarana Yacht Club to register today.

Don’t let it be too easy for WASABI to win 😂😂

So one of the sheave housing in the port steering post gave up again... can’t access it through the laz as the quadrant is in the way. Can’t get the boat out of the water in time.

We now have a new access hatch… makes a great air vent for hot days as well!

Finally our review of the race.
Our start was a little slow, however it gave us the inside line around north head which is what I really wanted, we were able to gybe early and head up the coast. Went wide around Tiri with a few other boats, this really suited our target angles and we were holding on quite nicely.

Fairly uneventful at this point, our rockstar bow team had already done several sail changes as we aimed to optimise our wind angles.
Our game plan was to stay up the middle until about 2pm and if the easterly hadn’t arrived we’d head inshore to stay with the dying breeze. At sail rock we had to make a big call to on this as the fleet split up.

We elected to stay in shore and had this theory (we thought) validated by Skinner who was on Georgia one and did the same thing. It was really tough to watch Serena heading deep, but you can’t split a boat in 2. Turns out Serena made the call of the day – well done guys!!!!

We continued up the coast in tricky conditions, watching 30 degree wind oscillations come through regularly.

A bit after nightfall, whilst trying to go over a boat we picked up one of these oscillations and an increase in breeze briefly to around 20kn, after wiping out due to the wrong sailing angles the A1.5 decided it had had enough of the coastal and shredded itself. Amazingly quickly work by the bow team had us back up and going with Kermit (A4) pretty quickly and we were off (on a much deeper angle this time) .

The approach to Brett was tricky, stuck wide with a rapidly easterly rotation we elected to go outside the rock, not sure this was the best call but at the time with the information available it made sense.

The last few miles were different we had a flotilla of 60+ boats trying to chase us down (looking aback all you could see was about a 3mile wide set of nav lights getting bigger and bigger), freezing monsoon style rain, huge wind shifts and a dying breeze…. All to get rolled by Skinner and Georgia one on the finish line.

Adriaan and I are super proud of the team and the huge amount of energy and effort they put into the race, everything that was asked of them was done quickly and efficiently. If only we’d made a different decision at sail rock we’d be looking at top 5 PHRF result.

Anyways another coastal done and dusted.

Gee there are a few boats without completed entries... if you know someone on this list share this post with them so they don't race for nothing.