WE WERE IN THE LEAD BY ABOUT 5 MILES!
We had 90 miles to Halifax!
We did a tack and a 12 mile hitch out into the Atlantic so we could make Halifax.
Weather reports had said that the EAST wind we were experiencing was going to swing to the south during the day tomorrow. We were below the rhumb line and decided to risk going a little further inshore and will get paid BIG off handsomely when the wind shifted to the SE, and we would be on a beam/broad reach into Halifax vs all the offshore boats that would be dead downwind.
The wind had picked up over 30 knots, us with a full main, #3 and all bodies on the rail to flatten the boat out. We would stay like this for another 8 hours. We had started to get closer to shore by Mahone Bay, with no wind shift. WE DID NOT GET THE WIND SHIFT AND LIFT TO HALIFAX.
We were 2.5 miles from Peggy's Cove.
If we had tacked even one hour (7 miles) earlier, we would have sailed 6 miles less.
As we came out of Mahone Bay, Harrier had made up our 5 miles lead.
The J/35 Harrier has the same PHRF rating as MacIntosh, so the final 25 miles was a match race. We covered them all the way to windward turning mark at Halifax and they got ahead of us on the reach to the next turning mark.
On the final turning mark, we were hoping to fly the spinnaker, but the wind had shifted just forward of the beam making it difficult to fly the symmetric chute.
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| Harrier's lead at the start of the final 12 miles |
Dirk was on the helm, and Mac was a handful in the puffs.
We were flying towards the finish at over 9 knots, gaining on Harrier.
The course swung more downwind, and we were able to close the gap further.
This is how close we got at the finish line:
After 3 days on the water, we end up with a 25 mile match race, 20 seconds out of first place.
So we placed SECOND in PHRF-3 and FOURTH overall in PHRF.
We were disappointed, tired, but proud of our accomplishment.
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