John Fletcher report on his Brisbane to Gladstone Race
John (Fletch) Fletcher has just completed the 2017 Brisbane to Gladstone Race on his 17m yacht Utopia after having a break from racing for 19 years.
He is a long-standing member of the MYC.
Fletch will be campaigning his yacht Utopia (The Ute) in next year’s Melbourne to Osaka Yacht Race.
This is his report from the race.
The Ute is back home safe after our Glado adventure.
The boat performed faultlessly, sadly due to lack of time on water we couldn’t follow up our great start with a result.
I hadn’t even set my new # 1 or the new Asso before the start and as a crew we hadn’t even set a spinnaker let alone gybe one!
After a nine-year layup and three-year re-fit we finally arrived at Cabbage Tree Creek for the start of the 69th B2G.
An early start on Good Friday to get our safety audit completed thanks to Chris Morgan from Royal Queensland and we are ready to go.
A quick trip up the mast to tidy a couple of things and although we were the last boat to cast off, I had that lovely feeling that all was well and The Ute was ready to race once again.
Pete James and I were discussing the weather scenarios on the trip down from Mooloolaba the previous day and it was looking like the predicted north-east breeze was a good chance of happening.
I regularly seek Jamesy ‘s option on weather as he is generally on the money, especially on Moreton Bay.
If you wanted the best position to watch the start of the B2G you would be sitting on the veranda of the James family home on Scotts Point, which is midway between the start line and the first mark off Garnett Rock, so he has a bit of background waking up to that view for the first 15 – 20 years of his life.
A light east-south-east started to filter in about 10.30am which gave the fleet just enough breeze to manoeuvre around and I think everyone was in awe watching Black Jack manoeuvring at what looked like nine to 10 knots of boat speed in six to seven knots of breeze.
With about 15 minutes to go I unfurled my new # 1 for the first time. It looked pretty good, way to heavy cloth for this breeze, but that’s what I ordered as it has a lot of miles to do.
I manoeuvred towards the leeward end of the line as it was going to be way too busy at the windward end.
As the start gun fired we found ourselves in clear air with about one metre to the line, Jamesy was on the bow and gave me the thumbs up, so with my heart in my mouth away we went. A couple of moments later Black Jack came swishing past to windward, but was gone in a flash, leaving us with clear breeze again.
It wasn’t long before the fleet to windward were changing to their code whatever’s and a short time later a few asso’s were starting to pop.
As I hadn’t set mine as yet and we were still of the opinion that the breeze was going to move north, we stuck with the # 1.
We were about 25th around the Garnett Rock mark, but only a couple of miles from the leaders so we were happy with that.
As we started across the Bay we were teased by some shifts to the east, but our north-east sea breeze never arrived.
We passed a few boats on the breeze across the bay and considering I was adjusting the car position and I hadn’t calibrated the through-the-water speed indicator, I was pretty happy with the way the boat was sailing.
We rounded the M8 mark and eased the sheets and The Ute hit the double numbers as the waterline length came into play.
Soon we rounded M9 and broke out the new asso for the first time. It was a bit scary actually, bloody big sail!
We gybed our way down the North-West Channel and that was a bit scary too as none of the crew had gybed an asso before, so we nearly wrapped it couple of times.
We were to do a proper job of that late on Saturday night off Bustard Head.
We Cleared the Caloundra Fairway just after dark in around 20th position on line and headed up the coast with the asso set and we had a great sail up the coast overhauling four or five boats through the night.
We were in the chocolates Saturday morning off Indian Head, 15th on line and 2nd in our Div PHRF, 4th in our Div in IRC & 5th in ORCi , 6th overall in PHRF.
It was at this point our lack of practice as a team was to let us down. We should have set the big kite, but I decided that the chance of a foul up was very real and it wasn’t worth the risk.
Apparently at some stage Saturday arvo the computer had us winning all divisions, but that was a stuff up obviously.
Anyway, our sponsors were happy with the publicity and we finished which is always a good thing!
I’m really happy with how the boat went and I know without doubt that if we could have safely set the big kite and successfully put in the two or three gybes required down Breaksea Spit and across the paddock we would have had a much better result.
It’s just great to get The Ute sailing again at last.