After a number of false starts - George Hendy finally managed to bring Georgia One back from the Bay of Islands (See earlier story about Bay Week). The delay in delivery meant that - once again - Jim Farmer was able to avoid doing a delivery trip. Apparently though it wasn't all hard work. The photo showing George proudly holding his catch attests to that.
Two days later, the boat was taken up to Kawau for the annual Round Kawau race. Tom brought 2 of his match racing mates who proved to be great value. Chris Dickson also volunteered to do tactics, which no doubt helps to explain the great result that we got (see below). Chris also provided great hospitality by meeting a number of the crew in the Sandspit car park where we climbed on to his Sea Legs amphibian and proceeded across the car park, into the water and then to Kawau where we first went ashore (without getting our feet wet) to his lovely beachside house in Bon Accord Harbour and then to Georgia One which was anchored in the bay. After the race, the process was reversed with a few quiet ales, back to Sandspit and home or by sea in Georgia One in the case of George and the boys and Sabra (who, still in the recuperative phase, had come up for the day and spent it on Chris's house with Gina, Ricky's wife).
Division A was a good fleet with the new Akatea, Pete Geery's brand new Cookson 50 replete with TP52 sails, Sababa (Farr 52), Systems Thunder (52) and Mojo (Eliot 40) expected to be the main opposition. As it turned out, after an excellent start at the favoured boat end, we turned the first mark after a 1 mile laid windward beat a close second behind the Cookson 50 and ahead of the rest of the fleet. After a long run down past the North point of Kawau we were comfortably ahead of Sababa but a reach across to Flat Rock saw them close right up behind us with Systems Thunder and the Cookson ahead of us. However, we forced Sababa to tack away in the long beat to the southern end of the Island and also passed Systems Thunder. By this time we were well clear and in 2nd place behind the Cookson. On the run back up the island to the finish point, we stretched on the fleet finishing in 3 hours and 50 minutes.
When the results came through, we had won General Handicap by 16 and half minutes. The boat however did not feautre in either IRC or PHRF. As it turned out, the owner had forgotten to tick these boxes when entering! However, calcuations showed that, but for that act of gross carelessness/stupidity, Georgia One would have won PHRF by over 12 minutes and IRC by half an hour! There is no doubt that the boat is fast and is being sailed well.
Next events for Georgia Racing are Sydney (Audi Middle Harbour YC) in the 52 on 5 - 6 March and the BMW Auckland Regatta in the 43 on the 18 - 20 March.