After a promising strong easterly sent yachts north to Mullaloo for races 3 and 4 of the NCS, once underway, the breeze petered out, frustrating skippers who couldn’t finish within the time limit.

It was a great day for those celebrating WA Day, those at the cricket (if optimistic), on the beach or even sailing once the sea breeze kicked in. Unfortunately with time given to boats to finish and waiting for the wind to fill in, the decision was made to abandon setting up for race 4. The best sailing of the day was back to HYC in the sea breeze only to find a queue of runabouts clogging up the runway to ramps. Farrouk (Des and Gail Riley) coped well threading a path between them, without engine.

Divisions one and three started together with Sophia (Bruce Utting) getting away cheekily on a port tack with the pin-end favoured, pursued by Perle (John Bird) and Mimosa (Tony Brooke). An hour-glass in Perle’s spinnaker took almost that time to untangle and rounded the leeward mark with Intuition. The second leg was better but then the breeze shifted and waned, kites were gybed and eventually pulled down. The order of finishing didn’t change on handicap, Sophia then Perle and Mimosa.

Division three had a five-minute start on division two and that was enough for Catabatic (Rob Bills), Intuition (Marc Carpenter) and Kind of Blue (Boyd Timler) to finish, in that order and with the same result on handicap. The final downwind leg became a beat to the finish line as the sea breeze approached.

Division two suffered the most with the wind shift however Covert Operation (Bart Brouwer) skilfully negotiated the changes to catch the division three boats and finish in an elapsed time second only to Sophia. Twenty minutes behind, Panache (Geoff James) and Volant (Emille Janssen, Frank Hagemann, Kevin Meta, John Ball) finished second and third, and on handicap. The three remaining division two boats were still on course with no breeze and no chance of finishing as the time limit expired.

Many thanks to the start management team of Laraine Brindle, Sally Simmonds, Dee and Ken Treen (ORSSC) and Rob Gouldsmith; results, Marshall Fox, and skipper of Alibi, Mark Taylor. In the RIBs, Mark 1, Jack and Anna; Mark 2, Philippe and Barney from Show Me and Mulberry laid the course - thanks very much.

John Bird