29/09/2026
A very fun week of racing the Spring Regatta at False Bay Yacht Club Official Site 🔥
Day 1: it haf been 2 years since I last helmed the Erhardt Joubert 26 and the first race was definitly a quick refresher on how to Helm the boat upwind. Being constantly off target speed and height the team only managed a 2nd in the first race. However race 2 started to light up upwind and downwind the avanti was untouchable. We won the 2nd race and finished day 1 as class leaders of the sports boat class.
Day 2 of racing had us sailing 2 windward leeward and a coatsal race. We stared the first race dialed in from the start gun and finished 1st in the sportboart class. Race 2 we had an unfortunately issue with the spinnaker hoist that left us fishing with our spinny deep under the boat. A few minutes later we were sailing again but only managed to recover to a 2nd place. The last race was not perfect but we had enough in the tank to take 1st again leaving the 2nd day with a 1 point lead in our class.
Day 3 was a single coatsal race with winds as high as 26knots. Unfortunately we set off with a no.4 jib and a re**er main and the wind o ly picked up on the downwind leg leaving us short of power and speed upwind in some nasty chop.
Downwind was catch up time but besides hitting 17.5knots in 22knots of wind the avanti wasnt feeling her usually electric self downwind. We suspect a less then ideal antifoul job, some fairing work needed to improve keel foil and some rudder offset maybe the culprit. Unfortunately as we passed Miller's the backstay flicker snapped leaving us with no backstay tension and a dangerous amount of sail up on a now unstable mast. We quickly delivered the boat and recovered the sails. Avanti26 retired from day 3 and tied sports boat class with 7 points over 6 races but got counted out to take 2nd place overall against 2x pacers 27s, 1x melges 24.
