Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Yacht Race 2015 - Beau Geste on the pace
by Lisa Ratcliff /RPAYC media on 2 Jan 2015
Club Marine start - 34th Club Marine Pittwater Coffs Harbour Yacht Race 2015. Howard Wright /IMAGE Professional Photography
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34th Club Marine Pittwater Coffs Harbour Yacht Race 2015 - Karl Kwok’s 80-foot Beau Geste has opened its 2015 Australian season as the leading monohull in the 34th Club Marine Pittwater Coffs Harbour Yacht Race. It is side-by-side with Sean Langman’s 60-foot trimaran Team Australia in light easterly winds south off Newcastle.
'We have Beau Geste right off our starboard side about 500 metres away,' said Team Australia’s navigator Josh Alexander at 1821hrs. 'We’ve had south-west winds, now it’s starting to back to the east. We’ve been struggling for the last two hours doing five knots of speed, but we are coming back into the good stuff now. Hopefully we can get going in the next two to three hours. Jimmy [Spithill] had a drive for a while.'
Team Australia began its dash north at 1315hrs, 15 minutes after the main fleet, and quickly wound up to be flying on one hull for the reach across the mouth of Broken Bay and out into open waters in the puffy 12 knot sou’east breeze. Conditions were hazy for the two starts and the sea churned up by a sizeable flotilla of spectator craft fare welling race-goers.
The international crew of Beau Geste headed up by skipper Kwok, a well-known Hong Kong businessman, and New Zealand boat captain Gavin Brady also powered off the start line north of Barrenjoey Headland, the behemoth of the monohull fleet.
Nearest to the frontrunners are the two TP52s, Syd Fischer’s Ragamuffin with Brenton Fischer as skipper close to the coast and Rob Hanna’s Geelong based Shogun, sporting another Kiwi sailing luminary Stu Bannatyne, further out to sea.
Steven Proud’s Swish is next in line and Camille and Out of Sight are guarding the rear off the NSW Central Coast.
Some five minutes after the first gun blasted at 1300hrs today, Friday January 2, 2015 Hussy, Jem and Wave Sweeper were recalled by the race committee for jumping the start line.
At this point there’s been no mention of race records falling and organiser the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club says it’s unlikely given the fickle first afternoon and forecast headwinds, which means a series of tacks over the 226 nautical race up the NSW coast from Broken Bay to Coffs Harbour, the popular tourist destination once known as the banana capital of Australia.
Margaret Rintoul’s navigator Julie Hodder provided this report at 1648hrs this afternoon:
'We have been waiting for the NE’s all day – a good wind angle and strength for Margaret Rintoul. Instead it keeps going right, so now the wind is 225 to 230, which is dead opposite to the forecast.
'We have gybed along with the boats around us to take us closer to the next mark – Port Stephens. It is quite frustrating.'
Still there is plenty for Hodder to celebrate as she explains, 'sailing on Margaret Rintoul is sheer pleasure compared with most of the boats I have raced on. I was showed to my own bed(!), well the lounge. The boat’s chef has given us a run down on the menu including the wines. The toilet actually works! And it has a shower! I could live here.'
The monohull course benchmark of 18hr 29min 14sec was set in 2003 by Bob Oatley/Mark Richards with Wild Oats IX.
Last January Team Australia set the multihull record of 17hrs 3min 5sec.
Club Marine, Australia’s largest provider of pleasure craft insurance, is proud to be the naming rights sponsor of the 2015 Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Yacht Race.
