On New Years Day, Richard Upton tried out the Seacliff to Semaphore marathon. Here are his observations relating to a planned race this summer.
I did a practice run today (NYD) in a 15-25 knot SW seabreeze. 7.5 KA Koncept, ~110L slalom board and 23cm weed fin. Took a waterproof bumbag with a mobile phone and wallet and bribed my wife with a coffee to pick me up at the other end. Very glad I did. First, it was awesome fun. But I also learned a few things. It took me 44 min to get from Seacliff to the north side of the new breakwater at Semaphore. Quicker than a car I think so the idea of starting people at Seacliff then driving down to record the finish won’t work. I pressed on to Largs Bay, as we did discuss finishing there – I wouldn’t recommend that. The change in angle to the coast means that you may be forced a longway out to sea (see pic) once past Semaphore. Otherwise it was possible to hug the coast all the way down, never being more offshore than the short-boarders BAFing at the various spots along the coast. The idea of having inshore gates along the coast isn’t as good as it sounds. At a deep angle off the wind you seem to be concentrating on bearing away on the swells to get closer to shore, and rounding up slightly if you lose pressure in the sail. It’s a delicate balance – the shore is behind your sail and very hard to devote attention to things like a person or a buoy, or in fact identify things like Yacht clubs or SLSC clubs along the way. There are only 2 very obvious structures that appear in front of you – a west cardinal mark just north of Adelaide Shores, and the intake for West Lakes – about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way. I suggest we make it mandatory to pass inside of these, and have an observer onshore at each with binos. To do the first one, you need to head inshore after the breakwater at Glenelg. The jetties are very obvious of course.
The sea conditions were chop and a rolling swell which disappeared between Semaphore and Largs. The wind strength seems to come and go on 5 min cycle or so. My average board speed was about 20 knots, with bursts to 25 k. Not that fast because of the deep angle, but the fastest VMG downwind according to my sums – happy for someone to prove me wrong! Sailed comfortably and safely at this speed, with at bit of load on the back leg. It is a different style of sailing however, which I think it pays to practice before hand. The main problem is going for a gybe after a long session on one tack – all your muscles seem to be frozen in the one position. However, physically it wasn’t too demanding and I actually felt I could sail the same distance again. It was almost too short! With this particular board, I was totally confident in not stuffing the nose into the back of a swell (= big prang). The weed fin was a success in that it didn’t catch weed and was fast enough, but too small and prone to spinout which with this board can trip a rail – fell off 3 times I think which were all due to spin-out (not pilot error of course :-) ). Had one panicky episode off Glenelg when waterstarting just wasn’t working till I realised my harness loop was hooked on the fin. Panicky mostly because I realised I might be blowing a PB time to Glenelg. I didn’t particularly feel at risk for the whole trip except when uncomfortably offshore from Largs.
From the Seabreeze responses, it looks like this will be a pretty small event – I think the main challenge will be the reality that in Adelaide we have to call the event at short-notice when the wind looks good. Seabreezes can be hard to predict, even the day before. Not conducive to elaborates plans, where people are constantly on standby. I think a boat would be good but possibly optional if logistics are too hard. A buddy system with mobile phones could address a lot of concerns if the SeaRescue Squad and SLSC are advised and on standby.
Read the forum discussions at;
http://www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=59806
