Dec. 18, 2000-Another Race Trophy

Warrior (more recent photo)

Today Warrior conceded that Wings was the winner of the Wings Blue Ribbon Race to Australia, and presented a bottle of Bundaberg Rum to us. Hooray! Well, racing sometimes can be fun, and the impromptu race we sailed from New Caledonia to Australia was one of those fun ones. Warrior made the initial challenge and Wings accepted. The rules were simple, any course, any departure date, any destination as long as it was in Oz, and the fastest average speed under PHRF handicaps over the passage to Oz was the winner. Other boats silently joined in and off we all went.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold

Sandy & Lloyd Banta

Wings had a great passage, as we said before, and we clearly beat all the boats near us, but we never saw Warrior, and all we heard was that they really took off, leaving the boats near them in their dust. So until we caught up with Lloyd and Sandy in the boat yard in Mooloolaba we didn't know how well they actually did, but we suspected they had really clobbered us. Not so! When we got together and compared times we knew it was going to be close, they finished just 45 minutes ahead us. Lloyd scored the finishes on his computer, and although they sailed a longer course to Brisbane, on corrected time we just nipped them. Our average speed was 7.22 knots, theirs (on corrected time) was 7.19; that's close! The payoff was prompt and with our bottle of rum in hand we invited them over to Wings to share it.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold

Old Blue's Last Day

The trip to Mooloolaba ended with a great spinnaker run down the coast, some super speeds, great rock on the stereo, and a little hard stuff out of the bottle, and it all ended with a shredded spinnaker. Yep! We blew out old blue, our favorite 22 year old 3/4 oz. spinnaker. In a big gust it just went away, pulled a Cayard. We knew the cloth was getting tired, in fact it was rotten, so it is no more. When we got into the marina we just dropped it in the dumpster. But never mind, we have four others.

Now we are waiting for a good weather pattern to head off to Sydney. It will be hard to leave Mooloolaba. This wonderful beach town has everything, tons of sunshine, a great beach, shopping that can't be beat, and a sailing program that looks really fun. But we've set our sights on Sydney, and Mooloolaba will still be here if we want to come back later, so we have made up our minds, we will leave soon. But then... we need northerly winds and the forecast is for southerly winds So if you hear from us next week and we haven't left, don't worry, this is a nice place to be stuck.

Click here for some more photos of the trip to Mooloolaba

Click here to see the hardcopy log of the trip (race)

Click here to see the hard copy log of our sail to Mooloolaba


Fred & Judy SV Wings, Mooloolaba, Australia