- A Race ‘Within a Race’…
Flying the Air Force flag
By SGT Dean Jolley
On the Friday of Labour weekend every year, sailors from all over Australasia line up off Devonport Wharf in Auckland for the Annual Coastal Classic yacht race to Russell in the Bay of Islands, a distance of 125 nautical miles. This year three of the 229 yachts on the start line were from the Navy’s fleet of Sail Training Craft, which were essentially having a ‘race within a race’ to be the first Navy Yacht to the finish.
Crewed entirely by NZDF personnel, the Navy yachts comprised of an all female Navy team (Manga II), a ‘Rock star’ Navy / Army team, (Paea II) and an all RNZAF team (Mako II). To say there was a fair bit of competition between these three identical yachts would be an understatement to say the least! There is also every chance that the 4 metre x 8 metre RNZAF roundel flown from Mako II also added to that tension.
‘Mako II Crew’
To get anywhere in a yacht you need wind, and this year we had more than we needed… The weather forecast on the morning of the race read as follows; ‘20 Knot’s, rising to 30 knots late afternoon and 35 knots rising to 40 knots late evening with heavy rain and thunderstorms’. And just to add to that was the fact that the wind was blowing from exactly where we wanted to go. It was no surprise then that less than 6 hours into the approximately 30 hour race well over half the fleet had pulled out from either damage, or the thought of spending a night out in those sort of conditions, with only 83 of the 229 actually making it to the finish line. For the Navy yachts though it was a different story, with all three crews facing, with grim determination, the fact that as long as the other two yachts are still out here – there’s no way we’re pulling out!
The busy pre-start area
Anyone who has ever done any yacht racing will tell you that a small start line with a lot of boats and plenty of wind is a tense place to be. Our division start was no different with around 80 - 100 yachts, all worth anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000, manoeuvring within a metre of each other for the best start position. It’s no place for the timid. Our RNZAF crew managed to get into and hold an excellent position to clear the start line as one of the first 10 boats across, comfortably in front of the other two Navy yachts. For the rest of the way up the beautiful East Coast the yacht positions of the ‘race within a race’ didn’t change much, with our crew doing our best to cover every move either of the Navy crews made. The problem with races like the Coastal Classic though – is that they sail through the night, and without being able to see the other boats it’s often where your race can be won and lost.
Fortunately for us, and with the help of the New Zealand Customs launch letting us know where the other two Navy yachts were the next morning, we managed to hold them off and finish in a time of 30 hours 5 minutes and 2 seconds, finishing fifth in our division, 22 minutes ahead of Paea II and 1 hour 13 minutes ahead of Manga II. With a three day cruise home to add to it, life couldn’t have got sweeter…