This Fridays North Sails Twilight rum race had a distinctly international flavour with yachts and sailors from the GLY World Odyssey 500 rally joining in the fun.

Claude Bocquet and his crew entered the magnificent Outremer 51 “Vitamine” and Rob Peters and his crew of GLY sailors entered their beautiful Outremer 45 “Endless joy.” Kantime and Nexus had GLY crewmembers on board and the Feltons gave up the Etchell this week for the opportunity to crew on “Vitamine”.

Boats started in about 8-10 knots of Southerly and we were soon enjoying a great run to the Southern channel markers. After gybing it was close hauled to Caters where Vitamine just managed to sneak inside of Endless Joy with Simply Red chasing hard.

Simply Red took a tight angle back into the channel and passed Vitamine to windward while Frivolous fish fought to stay ahead. On the beat home we found ourselves doing a double take as Kantime called out for the windward boat to keep clear in French!! What fun!

In the end, Simply Red were too good and took the gun with Outlaw second and Frivolous (who sailed incredibly well on the beat home) third. Buzz hung on for 4th and the rest of us succumbed to the tide and dying breeze in the Okiato channel. 

We motored back in past the yacht club to cheers from the other GLY participants and the club was soon buzzing with happy crews swapping stories over a drink and a meal.

Thank you to everyone who joined in, especially our friends from the GLY rally….. your participation made the day very special. Merci!

We continue to get new people joining the fun. This week we welcome Katie from Kerikeri who sailed on Flying Cloud in her first race ever. She says her only regret is that she hasn’t taken up the offer to do this earlier!

Here’s a quick video recap of the action. Enjoy!