Revenge for the Ashes -Vectrix Australian SB3 Nats

by Rob Kothe / Lisa Ratcliff/ on 27 Jan 2008 The Pommes took a giant step towards revenging their Ashes Cricket drubbing, with Britain’s Leigh McMillan and his UK bowman Chris Kerrison carting Australia’s Brendan Garner off the race course to take the inaugural Vectrix SB3 Australian National titles at the 2008 Skandia Geelong Week.

McMillan is a top British Tornado sailor, he will be sailing for Britain in Qingdao, Garner, a former Australian Fireball champion, sails out of Royal Geelong Yacht Club. The Brits took the Vectrix SB3 Class Australian Championship by just 1.5 points.

Third was another Britisher, John Shelley has twice sailed into second place at Cowes Week and fourth was Guy Bancroft who was second at the B14 Worlds in Falmouth in the UK last year.

“Despite the excellent hospitality, we didn’t want to leave the silverware in its home town,” admitted Kerrison this afternoon.

With two new female crewmembers who were picked up amidst the post-race festivities at Royal Geelong Yacht Club (RGYC) last night and who were “excellent at applying sun cream”, McMillan and Kerrison enjoyed toying with the local favourites in today’s final races.

“We had calculated that as long as Home Team finished below fourth place, we’d win the series so on the final upwind leg we took them right out wide. The two of us rounded the final top mark around three minutes behind the lead boats,” Kerrison said this afternoon.

As well as high profile McMillan, a number of other ‘name sailors’ featured in the top placings including British world class sailor Andy Hazell and two-time Hong Kong Yachtsman of the Year, Mark Dagge.

This new one design class has rejuvenated Kerrison’s passion for yacht racing while Kai Timm from Oceanburo, the Australia-wide importer of the class, heralded the inaugural Australian regatta a major success.

Built in Germany and the fastest growing one design class in the world according to Tim, the SB3s are well established in Europe and so far a fleet of 24 has been imported into Australia with six sold and the majority of the remaining SB3’s chartered out for this regatta.

A well known Queensland Sunshine Coast company, Tasqua, bought one and loaned it to an up and coming youth crew, skippered by Sean O’Rourke, and Kimm lent an SB3 to some crew from his local yacht club, narrowly beating them by just one place.

Provisional Results and images here.

Series Results [Elapsed Time] up to Race 7 (Drops = 1)

Place	Ties	Sail No	Boat Name	Skipper	From	Sers Score	Race 7	Race 6	Race 5	Race 4	Race 3	Race 2	Race 1
1		3389	PBR-	Leigh McMillan	MDSC	10.50	[12.00]	3.00	1.50G	1.00	3.00	1.00	1.00
2		3386	HOME TEAM	Brendan Garner	RGYC	12.00	[10.00]	1.00	1.00	2.00	2.00	4.00	2.00
3		3382	GBR 1	Jon Shelley	UYC	14.50	1.00	2.00	2.00	6.00	1.00	2.50	[14.00O]
4		3380	SAIL-MCRAE	Guy Bancroft	MCCYC	24.00	2.00	4.00	3.00	5.00	5.00	5.00	[8.00]
5		3383	GBR 2	Andy Hazell	UYC	26.50	3.00	6.00	7.00	4.00	4.00	2.50	[14.00F]
6		3384	OCEAN BLUE	Mark Dagge	RQYS	33.00	8.00	[9.00]	6.00	3.00	6.00	6.00	4.00
7		3356	OCEANBURO 11	Kai Timm	MDSC	35.00	4.00	7.00	4.00	7.00	[8.00]	7.00	6.00
8		3387	NOOSA RIVER FERRY	Phil Crawford	NRYRC	41.00	6.00	5.00	8.00	8.00	7.00	[8.00]	7.00
9		3364	TASQUA YOUTH	Sean ORourke	MDSC	46.00	5.00	8.00	10.00	[12.00]	9.00	9.00	5.00
10		3357	WAGOP	Mike McLean	NQCYC	49.00	7.00	12.00	5.00	[13.00]	11.00	11.00	3.00
11		3352	DART VADER	Mark Prince	NCYC	58.00	9.00	10.00	9.00	10.00	10.00	[12.00]	10.00
12		3385	FLYING FISH ONLINE	Andy Fairclough	MHYC	62.00	11.00	11.00	12.00	9.00	[14.00O]	10.00	9.00
13		SM3001	SEABISCUIT	Ian McLeod	SYC	71.00	13.00	13.00	11.00	11.00	12.00	[13.00]	11.00