Southerly buster wins Farr day two

by Rob Kothe on 2 Mar 2005 Farr 40 Worlds Day 2, race organisers had hoped to sail three windward leeward's off Sydney Heads today, but obviously forgot to email the weather gods.

The morning started with a fast moving thunderstorm sweeping through Sydney, then the fleet motored down the Harbour and to the startline.

It was hurry up and wait during a 30-minute lull while the fleet bobbed in 5-6 knots from the southeast, with breeze ever shifting, the postponement flag flying.

The first front came through, settling to a steady 15 knots from the south enabling Principal Race Officer Peter Reggio to gun the fleet away at 11:30am.

There was some urgency, because only 50 miles south, on the Illawarra coast, the second front, in this case a vigorous, fast moving cold front, better known as a ‘Southerly Buster’, was expected to come in at 25-30 knots, if that arrived that would be the last race of the day.

At the gun, Richard Perini on Evolution (AUS) had a perfect pin end start; one second after the gun, inside her there was a wall of boats over the line Warpath (USA), Norwegian Steam (NOR), Nanoq (DEN) and Brighton Star (AUS).

Tactician Russell Coutts had positioned Morning Glory (GER)perfectly 30 metres up from the pin and when Evolution tacked, she had to duck behind Morning Glory.

Soon the entire fleet was heading right, except for the boats that had to go back. They soldiered up the left hand side of the course in a death or glory mission that continued to look more and more deadly.

The breeze was building, and south of the course, two helicopters waiting to photograph the fleet, sensing impending carnage, took off from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport, reporting 22-25 knots.

Back on the course, Morning Glory was first to the top mark, just ahead of John Thompson's Solution (USA), with Neville Crichton's Team Shockwave (AUS) just outside her. Evolution reached around the clearing mark inside this group, ahead of Kokomo (Lang Walker, AUS), Joe Fly (Giovanni Maspero, ITA), Marco Rodolfi's TWT (ITA), Philippe Kahn's Pegasus (USA), Barking Mad (Jim Richardson, USA) and Nerone (Massimo Mezzaroma and Antonio Sodo Migliori, ITA).

Yesterday's dual winner, Ichi Ban (Matt Allen, AUS) was buried back in 15th place.

As the fleet disappeared towards the bottom mark, the wind continued to build and it was a fast surfing run to the bottom mark.

Evolution lead the fleet around from Morning Glory and Team Shockwave; the biggest gain on the leg was John Calvert-Jones' Southern Star (AUS). She moved from 20th to fifth.

Back up the beat, the crews were hiking hard to keep the boats on the polars and Team Shockwave sailed through Morning Glory. Ichi Ban had a great beat, climbing from 17th to 11th.

At the second spinnaker hoist, Evolution was clearing out from Team Shockwave and Morning Glory, ahead of Southern Star and the Steve Ellis driven Emotional Hooligan (Marcus Blackmore, AUS).

In the final run to the finish, the blue kite of Evolution just kept moving away from the fleet, with only Team Shockwave keeping in distant contact.

Behind them, a series of wipeouts, as boats attempted gybes in the rapidly building sea. Both Emotional Hooligan and Southern Star lost their feet but managed to hold good places.

On the western side of the course, Vincenzo Onorato's Mascalzone Latino (ITA) and to a lesser degree, Barking Mad, made good gains on the run, surfing past some of their competitors.

Evolution got the gun ahead of Team Shockwave, Morning Glory, Mascalzone Latino, Southern Star, Emotional Hooligan, Norwegian Steam and Kokomo. Yesterday's double winner, Ichi Ban, finished 14th.


It might be the busiest day yet for the International Jury, with Barking Mad notifying race officials she would be protesting Brett Neill's Venom (NZL) and Mascalzone Latino, advising she also intended to protest TWT.

While the fleet began preparing for the second race of the day, the full force of the Southerly buster began to hit the course.

With the residual northerly swell from yesterday, along with the south flowing East Australian current, conditions lumped rapidly under the force of the strong southerly.

The inevitable announcement came as Peter Reggio raised AP/H, sending the fleet back to the host club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, racing not yet abandoned for the day.

It could be that if the wind began to ease, a second race could be sailed inshore. However, as the wind did not appear to be easing, the southerly, with some huge gusts, won the day.

After Race 3, Australian Farr 40 champion and Mumm 30 World champion, Richard Perini now leads the series from Matt Allen’s Ichi Ban and Hasso Plattner's Morning Glory.

Perini felt that the key to today's racing was the start. 'We started fast on the pin, we found a good left hand shift and crossed the bulk of the fleet in a good clean lane.‘

Michael Coxon, tactician on Team Shockwave, along with owner Neville Crichton, was relieved with their second today.

‘We knew from the Pre-World’s that we had speed, but we had to regroup after our 17th yesterday.

'That was caused by a poor start and our inability to find clean lanes. Today we had the start we needed, rounded the top mark third, and went on from there.'

Plattner today was pleased with his placing in the overall fleet and was keen to refute Australian print media suggestions that Russell Coutts was being paid US$100,000 for the regatta.

He said that the whole three regatta series, with all up costs, including sails, rib and paid crew was only $135,000 and that Coutts was being paid only a fraction of the rumoured amount.

The fastest boat on the course today was probably Eivind Astrup’s Norwegian Steam.

They had a mixture of stop and goes. Over the line at the start, they fouled another boat at the top mark and started down the run in 24th place.

Astrup rounded an amazing 10th, then took another four places on the second beat. On the final run, they broached an shredded their spinnaker, but still managed to finish sixth. 2000 Soling Olympic Bronze medallist, Herman Johannessen, was calling tactics.

As their British coach Chris Law commented, ‘we’ve been working on speed, now we will be doing some more work on starts.‘

The final comment today came from Richard Perini. ‘The Australians seem to have had more practice adapting to the very changeable conditions, which may be the reason they are doing to well this week.’