A foot in both camps at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week

by Crosbie Lorimer on 25 Aug 2016 2016 Audi Hamilton Island Race Week - There are two boats among 252 at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week owned by the same family that fit the bill in terms of representing the contrasts of performance and comfort.

The Sydney 32 Onyx and the Seawind 1160 Tropical Sunset belong to David and Helen Hutcheson and their family is split across the two boats for the competition side of Race Week.

“We weren’t originally sailors at all,” says Helen, “when the kids were small we raced rally cars. David drove and I was the navigator. Our son Michael was a toddler at the time so I’d be servicing the car, feeding him and then going off racing.”

“It was only when we took a family vacation on a catamaran that we got interested in sailing,” David recalls, “and not long after that I built a Jarcat six metre trailable multihull which we sailed out of the Canberra Yacht Club.”

The family moved from Canberra to the Gold Coast in 2006, where David bought the chandlery Australian Boating Supplies based at the Gold Coast City Marina.

“It was a bit of a sea change really and we’d also bought our second Seawind catamaran by that stage,” he adds, referring to Tropical Sunset which is racing in Multihull Cruising Division Two.

It was while their two daughters Danielle and Emma were enjoying the benefits of sailing with the Southport Yacht Club (SYC) program that David and Helen saw a gap between opportunities to sail dinghies and moving on to keel boats and bigger yachts.

Asking himself the question as to how crew, particularly the younger ones aged between 15 and 30, move into keel boats and perhaps one day step up to ocean races, David also recognised the other side to the equation.

“Owners who participate in the keel racing classes often battle to find experienced crew, so it is a gap that definitely needs to be filled.”

Inspired by Peter Teakle’s Ocean Mentor program, the Hutchesons purchased one of Teakle’s Sydney 32s - now called Onyx – to run a twilight racing program open to all ages out of the SYC, with their two daughters regularly skippering and crewing the boat.

The family has a longstanding sailing relationship with Matt Owen, CEO of the Canberra Yacht Club, since he first taught the sisters to sail, so it was a natural option for him to borrow Onyx from the Hutchesons at Audi Island Hamilton Race Week.

The word ‘inspiring’ crops up regularly in the sisters’ talk of their sailing mentor. “Matt’s really chilled out and he’s incredibly patient, so he gives you time to learn,” says Danielle, 28, of Owen, who has already steered Onyx to top spot in the Racer Cruiser division of the Australian Yachting Championship after two races.

Younger sister Emma, 23, who sails an OK Dinghy out of SYC, is taking on a pivotal role aboard Onyx for Race Week.

“I’m in the pit,” says Emma, describing her role controlling halyards from the cockpit, “it’s fun, but it’s a busy job acting as the link between the front and the back of the boat.”

Meantime Danielle, who skippered Onyx at the 2015 Queensland IRC Championships with a youth crew, has opted for a slower pace as tactician on Tropical Sunset with her mother and father who are clearly enjoying the sailing and camaraderie as much as the competition amongst the multihulls.

“It’s brilliant having 14 Seawinds at Race Week, we really don’t get this sort of chance to compete against each other anywhere else,” says David with a broad smile as he points to a pontoon full of multihulls.

For more information relating to AHIRW visit regatta website.