We made record breaking time on this Harwood to Iluka regatta

What strange weather. I arrived at Harwood on Friday to prepare Little Dragon for the race on Saturday from Harwood to Iluka and return. There was an unexpected NE wind which some claimed reached gale force. Around 100 sailors got soaked pitching their tents. The wind blew all night and the next morning more rain. Miserable.


Neil McKenzie crewed for me once in 2011 and asked to come again. This time his wife Lorraine came as well planning a quiet time catching up with her work on her computer. Unfortunately the computer went on the blink, but that is another story...

Come the start of the race at 1.30 pm the rain stopped, the wind swung round to E then SE and moderated to a fine (at least for Little Dragon) sailing breeze.
I was the skipper but Neil was keen to take the helm and did so for much of the time on both Saturday and Sunday. I certainly found that crewing is hard work and I was exhausted by the end of the second day.

We were able to sail much of the way downstream on a narrow reach and a broad reach on the return with the tide. I have to admit that our personal best time had more to do with the conditions than our skill. We came in 4th out of 4 in our division but there was only 3 mins between us and the winner on corrected time. We consoled ourselves that that wasn't too bad.

It rained again on Saturday night and all through Sunday morning. However, lo and behold, at around noon when the racing started the rain stopped and there was another fine sailing breeze. I suppose some of the spectators may have found it a bit tame - hardly any capsizes or breakages but we enjoyed ourselves.

On Sunday we tried hard to improve our start - but failed badly for the first race. So we tried even harder for the second race. This time we were so keen that we were over the line and had to do a penalty restart. Clearly we need to practice starting.

You can just see Little Dragon on starboard behind the large yacht heading toward a dinghy on port. There were 69 entrants in this regatta ranging from a windsurfer to the substantial yacht in the photo. One needs to keep really alert in such a mixed fleet.

At the prize giving Neil and I were amazed at being called up for 2nd place in our division. The race committee was very generous and I will treat it as an encouragement award.

All in all despite the strange weather it was a most enjoyable regatta.