Arriving at the Multihull Central marina I was welcomed by the familiar faces of Sydney Seawind owners who had gathered for the last twilight race of the year. After catching up with friends at the dock I jumped on board Reflection an early Seawind 1250 and caught up with syndicate owner Chris. I was pleased to see Reflection had recently been upgraded with a new racing main and jib, as we would be racing the all new Seawind 1190 sport amongst other multihulls I thought this should make for some interesting sailing. Boats started to pull away from the dock readying for the 4pm start and we waited for the remainder of the crew to come hurriedly down the ramp and join us in the cockpit. In its nature Multihull Centrals twilight series is more of a fun evening sail than a true sporting event and yet my competitive streak reared its head as we began hoisting sails out on the beautiful Sydney harbor. Three Seawind Catamarans would race today along with two trimarans, a Dragonfly 35 and a Corsair 760. Onboard Reflection we had Neil from Barracouta sails, Christine from Multihull Central, Chris the owner of Reflection, myself and my wife Huong. Christine took the helm for the race as Neil and I started tweaking the sails and making small adjustments to lead cars, halyard tension and sail controls.
As the wind was very light we chose to use an overlapping genoa rather than the smaller jib. While providing the extra horsepower needed this reduced our pointing ability as the sheeting position is quite wide on the 1250. We overcame this by simply tying a preventer off the boom which moved the clew inboard about 15 inches. Off the start we were slightly behind but upwind of the 1190 sport, we were at first happy with this position as we began forcing them down wind however we soon discovered the 1250 simply could not nearly as well as the 1190 and they ended up creeping ahead as we began bearing away to regain speed. They must have a had around 5 degrees additional pointing ability on us which helped them take an early lead.
Our lesser pointing angle forced us to take an early tack to avoid shallow water, we thought this had damned us alas it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as a few lifts later we were heading right for our next mark. This accidental advantage enabled us to overtake the 1190 in this leg, which having passed the island in clear water put an additional 200m on the previous tack before going about. Rounding Shark island we were now in 3rd place, having been overtaken by the Corsair 760 and a Dragonfly 35. The 1190 hot on our tail, they unfurled their screecher and soon zipped by us as, we had no more sails in our wardrobe to help on this downwind leg. It seemed for a while that we would not close the gap between us and the winners however as it would be the wind died out almost completely just 500m from the finish. This caused most of the fleet to end up within 100m of each other as we slowly drifted towards the finish. In this last 100m we slowly managed to make ground on the Dragonfly but simply could not catch the 1190 or 760. The 760 (Corsair 760) coming in 1st , 1190 (Pirate King) in 2nd and us onboard Reflection in 3rd .
- 1st: 760 (Corsair 760)
- 2nd: 1190 sport (Pirate King)
- 3rd: 1250 (Reflection)
