DOUBLE CAPE RACE
The Double Cape has definately lived up to it's reputation this year. It is renowned for being a very tough race. It is too long to be cosnidred short and too short to be considered long with the result that one cannot get into a routine abaord and therefore tend to sail it like a round the buoy race with all hands on the weather rail etc.... and no sleep.
OUR RACE:
We got an excellent start on the line, naturally the bigger boats started to power away and we suffered a bit with our smaller headsail. We tried to look for more wind offshore but with little success. The breeze strted to fill in after Camps Bay with us strting our long hard beat to the point. Actually it was a great beat. There was enough breeze to keep the boat going fast and the sea was flat so what a pleasure. We reached Capew Point just after dark and immediately popped the kite for opur sail into False Bay. The breeze quickly freshened and we started surfing our way in. We did a bad drop on the kite with the result of us having the kite in tow in the water. We quickly recovered and decided to change the jib for a more suitable one for the hard beant out of False bay. The wind was strong on the beat with a steep chop which resulted in a lot of pounding. Very wet and hard on everyone but the boat performes well in thsi condition. We reached the point wherwe the conditions had improved slightly, down the other side the breeze started to increase, we gybed for Slangkop and started to catch all the surfs, the conditions started to become very strong with us maintaining excellent averages. We arrived in the Llandadno region and prepared ofr a strong hard sqaully final drag, we got one or two sections with wind but by Vamps Bay the wind had died away. We spent the rest of the race looking for breeze with it extending our finish time by 2 hours. We came 2nd overall on Club and IRC. Th crew did a sterling job in those conditions. Aboard were: Ian, Sarel, Walter, Greg and Dale.

MOSSEL BAY TO CAPE TOWN
Crew aboard were Dale and Walter Page. HP departed Mossel Bay at 20h30 after a leisurely supper in the yacht club. Must say the club was busy and we could not even get a table in the restaurant so we ate Bar style. We motored for the first 12 or so hours and then decided to conserve Diesel. The winds were light which left us beating with a VMG of about 2.5 knots on a beat. Gradually the breeze freshened improving our angle for Agulas. As we got closer the breeze started to freshen and free of. We got there at about 20h30. Once we rounded the breeze started to pick up with us sailing along nicely getting the odd surf at about 12 knots boat speed, all this while taking it easy. There was a lot of shipping and sea life during the night wioth us having to keep a sharp vigil. We went quite far South with our final angle heanding alomst due north towards Cape Point at sunrise. The sea state had the usual waves etc... and the highest wind speed was about 25 knots.. but nothing overly huge as one normally gets. We were able to sail down to slangkop where the wind died and forcing us to go back to motor. We motored the balance of the trip. The boat performed brialliantly without any problems being experienced. We were able to give the new autopilot a good test which we now give it the thumbs up. The sail was an absolute pelasure with us docking at RCYC at about 2pm Saturday.