Marlay Point Overnight Race 2020 and new boat name
The time arrived for our first Marlay Point Overnight race (MPONR), dubbed the “Sydney-Hobart for smaller yachts”. It took some persistence to convince Wendy and Simon to join, but they finally accepted, and we headed to Paynesville on the Friday before the race. The weather forecast wasn’t looking that great during the previous week, but luckily it settled on a light westerly for Saturday morning, changing to a moderate easterly later in the day. And no rain in sight. Great for motoring up to Marlay Point from Paynesville and having a look at the racecourse, particularly the McLennan Straits, during daylight.
The MPONR is a traditional race that has been around for 50 years now. It starts at sunset and goes all night, arriving at Paynesville in the early morning. How early it really depends on the wind of course, but many told me stories about being becalmed for most of the night, drifting through the straits and even having to drop the anchor sometimes to avoid going back if the tide was coming in. The fastest divisions have to cross the finish line in Paynesville and still go around Raymond Island and cross the finish line one more time again. My drawing in google maps gives me 37.2 nautical miles. Looking at past race editions, I was expecting arriving sometime in the morning. How wrong I was…
So in the morning of Saturday, we headed up to Marlay Point. The plan was to get there on time for signing in (had to be 4:30 pm at the latest), then have time to chill out and a good nap before the race, scheduled to start at 7:45 pm. We got there in five hours, all good and no dramas. We put the boat aft to the beach and did all the paperwork.
My family drove up there to spend some time with us and pick up Dora, my niece-in-law who is visiting Australia and got a ride with us to Marlay.
At 4:30 ish I decided to have a good rest in the boat. Problem: the wind had picked up from the east and now this end on the lake had a chop which made the boat very bumpy. I tried and tried but couldn’t really fall asleep. Same for Simon and Wendy. Well, we will have to cope with it I guess…
At around 6:30 we geared up, left to the start (really tricky with such a shallow lake and wind and chop!!). Main and jib #3 up. The start was good, we didn’t want to run into any trouble so we aimed for the middle and found a good spot with very few boats nearby. In fact, I saw Pipalini, the Castle to beat, and simply followed them. They surely know what they do, I thought. We started just behind them and followed them for the first few minutes. Actually we saw them slowly moving ahead and ahead, and pointing slightly higher than us… It was slowly turning dark and the lake started to look like a Christmas tree. White lights ahead, red and green behind. The fewer whites in front and the more green/reds behind the better we are I thought.
It was choppy and bumpy, it took us a couple of hours to get to the McLennan Straits. At some point, Simon got his pants wet on a wave and he went inside… never to be seen again almost for the rest of the race 😊.
Just before entering the straits we changed to the jib #2 and it proved to be a good decision. In the straits, we managed to gain a few places, not sure what we did right but it worked. And narrowly avoided getting stuck next to a Noelex. We were looking forward to a nice reach out of the straits… but the wind shifted to the NE!! We had to tack like a hundred times to get out of there, and our keel got in touch with the bottom 4 or 5 times… (After writing “a hundred” in the previous paragraph I actually checked how many times we tacked and I counted 21 times in the first part, a nice run in the middle, and 28 times getting out of there. Wendy did a great job on the jib sheets). Here is the full track recorded during the race where I counted the tacks.
Once in Victoria lake, we continued beating into the wind, but full main and jib #2 was just fine. I thought the wind would go back to the E or ESE and it did happen eventually, we suddenly managed to be able to point straight into the next race mark which was Storm Point and then a good long stretch without tacking, all the way into the (first) finish line. That happened at 2:45 am, exactly 7 hours after starting. No signs of Simon yet, apparently with the steady course and not changing sides he was finally able to sleep. Poor thing…
We managed to go through Paynesville without having to tack and then we were out again upwind. But it was slowly decreasing in strength and it was much more pleasant. Finally, after bearing away at the eastern side of Raymond Island we were able to put the kite up and have a run which lasted for ~30 minutes. We crossed the finish line again at 4:47 am, just behind a Noelex 25 and just ahead of a Seaway 25 (Pippin) with whom we had had a close “battle” for the last couple of hours. I didn’t know at the time, but both boats had the same yardstick than us.
In the end, the stats captured with the GPS show that we did 46 nautical miles in 9.26 hours (it counts the time since I switched the clock on, before the start), at an average speed of 4.9 knots. Full stats and map in https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/4630221218
We docked in the jetty next to the ferry, rolled the sails and just crashed. Well, not Simon who had had a pleasant sleep, so he went walking around doing some more filming and trying to see who had already arrived and who had not.
In the morning, after a hot shower and some coffee, we headed to the club to see the results. In this race, it’s very difficult to have a good idea of how good or how bad one is doing, because you lose track of your competitors and don’t know if they are ahead or behind. We kept the expectations low and really thought we would be in the bottom half, maybe the bottom third. To our pleasant surprise, we found out we were 11th in the division and only the second Castle to arrive, behind Pipalini who won the division (and also won a few other times before). Below a screen capture of the results, the full list here.
In the afternoon we took the family, including the four-legged member, for a spin, very relaxing without the pressure of the race and with a light wind.
Before the end of the story, there was one more big event. When I bought the boat I thought about changing her name, from Dancing Barefoot II to something else. Several options were in my mind, all of them trying to honour my sailing origins in Argentina. A few options I considered included “Pampero”, “Plata”, “Barlovento” and so on. But I ended up with mate. I’ll leave to the readers who don’t know what it is to read about from Wikipedia, but the idea is that those who don’t know will read the very aussie mate (like in g’day, mate).
Marina from Cariboo did the design and Mitch from Pipalini printed the name and installed it after the race.
Now I will have to get the shirts that I promised to the family and the crew. We certainly will get some and will look very professional. Luckily Marina also has that facility!!
All in all a great experience, we will probably become one of those fanatics who come back every year to do the race again. Well, at least myself, I’ll have to see what the rest of the crew think about it next year…
