Brute breeze for Farr 40 final

by Ian Grant on 28 Oct 2012 New South Wales Farr 40 skipper Guido Belgiorno-Nettis will have his highly respected helming skills tested when he attempts to win the Aberdeen Asset Management Queensland championship on a trade wind tormented Moreton Bay today.

Overnight Moreton Bay and the course area east of Green and St Helena Islands was whipped into a frenzy of short white crested waves by a solid breeze which peaked at 31 knots before dawn this morning.

This weather system will present the fleet with another searching test of fresh wind sailing and is expected to lay the foundation for a tactical arm wrestle between the Guido Belgiorno-Nettis helmed Transfusion and the improving Lang Walker skippered Kokomo who showed their class to fight back with an impressive win in race two before the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron officials left race 3 for another day.

The Transfusion crew excelled on all points of sailing to record a comfortable one minute 16 second win in race one over Kokomo and held a narrow lead on the first downwind over their rival in race two when they were ‘crash tackled’ by a 30 knot gust to experience a rare wild slide into an uncontrolled Chinese gybe.

All hope of dominating the series was lost when Transfusion was pinned down in her wild capsize allowing Lang Walker’s equally talented Kokomo crew to master the building breeze and testing 1.5m seas to eventually record 31 second win for both crews to share the lead with 1-2 results.

Kokomo’s tactician the London Olympic 470 Gold Medallist Malcolm Page is wearing some war wounds after he became entangled in the mainsheet and was flung across the cockpit however he showed his personal fighting spirit to set the tactical strategy in place for the Kokomo crew to set up a tactical dog-fight with the favourite Transfusion in the final races on a wind tormented Moreton Bay later today.