Mighty effort today for all crews in a brutal westerly. The first race scheduled as a handicap start over the one fixed course that I can recall in a fair while - see the video here which features the race start around 25:00 into the video stream. From there on it is a demolition derby..........

18footers.com/18-footer-racing/18-footers-tv/

A great initiative by the club after too many seasons of sailing off scratch starts to different rounding marks for hcap races. I fully understand the reasons for that - so have a scratch start and the first over the finish line is the hcap winner............but the benefits of the format run today, as was done for so long before, are obvious. Look forward to more such hcap starts over a fixed course - hopefully in a big rig noreaster which is the harbours best course by far.

Pretty tame Westerly! The Finns and 420's handled it easily. The highlight of the video was the start boat. Old navy/army workboat 460, same as I used to coxswain there in 1969 for 3 months. Later one I owned one for about 22 years. Vigilante down the bottom of the page.
www.boatregister.net/WW2_ArmyWorkBoats.html
I the early seventies I raced an OK dinghy in the state titles. One race was in a real Westerly with the start line in the same place as in the video and the top mark was Fort Denison! We still had wooden masts at the time and there were plenty of shattered masts that day.

Expect most would have experienced a mongrel westerly eg;

www.sail-world.com/news/228620/16ft-skiff-photos-turn-the-clock-back-to-1971

During the mid 70s we had the state Javelin titles out on the sound launching out of Little Manly and the nwester was over 50kts.........everyone except 2 boats wanted the racing that day abandoned. Those 2 boats went out and got into the wind, got smashed immediately capsizing. Got back to shore after about an hour of trying, said nothing and packed up and went home.

In 2017 Manly 16s were cartwheeling out the heads in 45+kts which was ~20kts for a few hours before that.............