5 categories

Birchmont, Herron Point

Road trip with Mark, Alan and Anita, warm, sunny and windy when we arrived. Thought it was going to be epic but too choppy, couldn't find flat water anywhere.

Cranked five 30+ knot NM's until my clew blew out, Mark came to assistance. Punched a hole through the sail and tied the batten to the boom to get the mile upwind back to base (an hour later).

Duffy was piling on the km's, good to sail with the MM and Salty.

Mistral 91,  GPS 5.5 (dead!),  CL Weedy 28

5 categories

Top day out at Herron Pt with AC1, Windxtasy, JJ, Decrepit, Fangy, Puf fin, Duffy and Saltynuts. Sunshine for a fair bit of the day but no real flat water.

Best run was over the point at the other side early on for a sweet 36.88 10sec.

Hour had 24 gybes in it and was probably a bit low to get good length runs, fully lit at times. 21.5 knot 2 hr with 42 gybes.

Naughty had a min of 24.7! Doh!

Alphas were hard to judge. Generally too tight.

Loft Blade 5.6, M SL91, Choco weed 27, 4.5kg

Birchmont, WA, AU 

90 Xfire then 100 Tabou Speedster 5.4 overdrive, 29 speed weed

Melville

M91; Ram 7.0; CL Speed Weed 27

Herron Point WA 4.9K, M47, 21 Tribal weedy

JJ messaged me at the crack of dawn saying a road trip was on and the crew were going to Herron Point. Our first time sailing there. Herron Point lived up to it's name. I have never seen so many heron and egrets in a small area, but don't they know Heron only has one 'r'?. The wildflowers along the freeway between Safety Bay Rd and Mandurah were beautiful... But what about the wind, you ask? There was plenty of that, but flat water was in short supply. The tide was meant to be going out but it couldn't because of the strong opposing wind.

My gear selection was right but I found sailing in such strong wind and chop quite hard work and the two directional chop in places was quite scary, so I decided to call  it a day before I got too sore. (It took me four days to recover from my sailing last weekend). I checked out Fangys on the way home but the wind was too gusty and offshore to be worth rigging again.

Good to check out a new spot and I can see it has potential in the right conditions. Great to share the day with Lao, JJ et Al,  Decrepit, Pas and Fangy from the MM, and Duffy and Grumpy from the Coastals.

Lao had notched up some really good numbers at the lunch break. I hope he was able to capitalise on those in the afternoon. I hear JJ had a mishap with his sail when both clew eyelets tore out, so backup might have been a bit light.

YoYos might have been the best call for speed but no-one seemed to know if there would be enough water there. Anyone know?

Melville - IS101, Turbo 6.5.  Very enjoyable late afternoon sail past sunset.