9:03 AM Tue 15 Dec 2009 GMT
Tenacity and patience are clearly characteristics on which Neville Crichton, owner and skipper of the 100 foot supermaxi Alfa Romeo , places great value.
Alfa Romeo shadowed Wild Oats XI for most of today's SOLAS Big Boat Challenge race, staying close enough to pounce should the Wild Oats crew make even the smallest mistake.
Crichton and crew were duly rewarded at the last top mark when the Wild Oats spinnaker formed a wineglass, the shape of which would have done justice to a drop of Bob Oatleys' finest.
Realising that they had too small a lead let the halyard fly or gybe aaway and unwind the wineglass, the Oats crew opted for luffing Alfa Romeo to try and force her into trouble too.
Alfa's tactician Michael Coxon said after the race that this ultimately unsuccessful strategy probably wound the wineglass so tight that a gybe which would normally sort out the twist simply didn't work for Wild Oats, an observation that would appear to have been true, with Bob Oatley's silver machine carrying the unflattering knot for much of the downwind leg before finally hoisting a Code 0.
What the Oats crew did not realise was that while Alfa was gradually over-running Wild Oats XI all was not well on board Crichton's boat either, as Coxon later explained,
'As we set off on the final downwind leg our kite trimmer remarked ' the good news is Wild Oats has a major problem, the bad news is' the trimmer added with less enthusiasm, 'so do we' as he pointed to a major riding turn on the spinnaker winch drum'
' We were left only able to wind the sheet on, but not to let it off and we had no track left to cut the sheet and give us time to rig a new one' added Coxon.
Coxon also explained the likely cause of The Wild Oats wineglass. Both boats only carried two spinnakers today and with three hoists and no time in which to wool the kite before the last run, they both resorted to what is euphemistically called 'The Bitch Hoist', a rapid hoist on the boat's fastest winch (The Bitch Winch) that requires the leeches to run cleanly to avoid twists.
The trick to this hoist is apparently to ensure that the previous drop is managed cleanly and leeches run carefully; Coxon speculated that Wild Oats difficult last drop might have been the cause of their woes, 'we talked this issue through on our penultimate run and worked hard to avoid the problem' said Coxon.
In the end Alfa Romeo crew sorted their problems out rather more quickly than did the Wild Oats XI team and Neville Crichton went on to win line honours.
That was on of two wins in this race for Crichton; apparently the skipper and owner had his first win as Alfa Romeo crossed the start line, bidding for a commercial building at auction on his mobile phone in the last minutes of the race's prestart phase.
Steering the boat throughout the auction Crichton crossed the start line, ended the call and remarked on his first win as he settled in to chase down Wild Oats XI:
'Got it!'
Crosbie Lorimer was blasting around the race course on Neville Crichton's Cigarette powerboat today, chasing the fleet and capturing these images.
by Crosbie Lorimer
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