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Cruise Captain, Paul Thackray writes, ‘Saturday morning as we motored to the start at Watson’s Bay was Sydney harbour at its sparkling best with t-shirts and sunscreen required for the run to Pittwater.  The crew of Phoebe started the day with a round of ‘Rustards’ at Bradleys Head to get the crew into the correct frame of mind and settle the pre-race nerves.

13 boats were entered in the Offshore race with new entries Shearwater and South Brittany joining us for the first time.  Into the Mystic was a mysterious omission from the entry list this year which was explained when Arthurs Psaltis was spotted onboard South Brittany disguised as a Bretton fisherman!

The breeze was a light northerly breeze which was predicted to build and go right all day but conscious of the overarching requirement to get everybody to the Pirate Party at Halletts beach on time our fearless race officer Rob Ridley sensibly flew code flag ‘L’ and led us  out to a start line just off Manly beach.

The breeze was as predicted and we started in 8 knots of breeze for a beautiful day’s sailing with some boats going into the coast and others heading offshore in a building breeze which got up to around 12-13  knots at times. There were also a number of our non-racing boats making their way North so it was a great sight on what everybody agreed later was a ‘cracker of a day’.

Hallets Beach was dressed up like a Caribbean beach for the main event of the day which saw a swarm of Pirates descend on Hallett’s from mid-afternoon for a feast of sausages and drinks to kick-off the weeks festivities.  Thanks to everybody for making the effort to dress up and the volunteers on the decorating and cooking. Alan Cox won the bottle of rum and everybody else got to take home the chocolates.

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