The Sledgehammer race is the first race for @konasailingclub of the calendar year.
Our spring series starts up March 19th. We welcome any skill level sailors to come visit the club!
The first official race for Kona Sailing Club’s 2023 season; THE SLEDGEHAMMER! With a great energy and uptick in participants we gathered at the club Sunday morning. Many had spent the morning bending on sails, scrubbing the bottoms and checking to make sure their motors were seaworthy! After a quick skippers meeting we headed out on the course.
There were to be two starts consisting of B Fleet boats (cruisers), multihulls (Trimarans) and one lonely A fleet boat (a faster cruiser/racer category. We opted to start the B Fleet boats then start the multihull and A Fleet boat together as that makes for a more interesting race with the faster boats sailing up through the fleet. Since the mark for the start line that RC set sunk, the start line was adjusted to the flag on the committee boat and a white roof on shore. This new start line had the crews practicing their dead reckoning skills as well as refining their starts.
The B fleet started right around noon and then the sequence for the next start began about ten minutes later. Summer Wind had motor troubles but made it out. The multihulls were playing “follow the leader” and both started early giving the single A fleet boat nice clean air and an easy start. The B fleet were all sailing to the mark set off the shoreline north of the course as the multihulls went a few miles offshore sailing angles and Mango Madness sailed the closest course with it’s injured crew member on the helm. Mango Madness passed Summer Wind before the rounding mark but sailed through the fleet as they began their sail back. Mahina Pua was close to the shore line and tacked back out to sea to get a cleaner line rounding the point off Kohanaiki. The multihulls were far off shore, compared to the rest of the pack. After spending some time on the outside, they tacked back into shore, and attempted to catch back up. The wind was constant and filled in a bit more than forecasted and all of the boats made it back to the finish line fairly quickly. After the race it seemed like all of the boats stayed out while enjoying the building breeze coming off kaiwi point. Once we had all sailed enough, we headed back for our potluck and catch up on stories of the day
