The Business powered by Easy Tiger Racing run out of roar

by Lulu Roseman on 19 Mar 2012 The Business, powered by Easy Tiger Racing with Skipper Chris Way and Tactician Steve McConaghy have finished in equal fifth place behind Funnel Web with 25 points, in the 2012 Melges 32 Australian Championship after eight races.

Noel Leigh-Smith's Desperado took out the title ahead of Tasmanian team 2 Unlimited 7 Star owned by Greg Prescott followed by Angus Reid’s Max Star from Canberra.

Team Tiger's chartered boat, The Business suffered damage to the D1 on the rig in the day's first race that resulted in a last in race six.

'After we broke the D1 it was just heartbreaking as we were in a really good position to finish on the podium and even though we were able to set up a jury rig and continue racing it was just not possible to reclaim the boat speed we had before,' tactician Steve McConaghy said back on the dock.

'We just had to watch ourselves lose places and points. It cost us the regatta as we were sitting in third overall when it happened and had been consistent over the previous two days.'

In the seventh race of the series the Easy Tiger Racing Team finished in seventh but were able to recover and pick up the pace in the final race of the day to rack up a fourth.

The day's final race saw gusts up to 25 knots and there was plenty of carnage on the racecourse with capsizes aplenty and kites being blown out left right and centre.

The highlight of the regatta for mast man Josh McKnight was seeing all the crew work finally come together on the final day.

'After the gear failure in the first race today it was really great to see everyone jump into their action plans and execute an effective repair,' McKnight said.

'After that we just tried to look ahead and at the time still expected to do three more races and believed we could recover and come back from that as we had been consistent for the entire regatta up until then.

'We were confident despite the breakage but as it turned out we had a tough day offshore and being new to the boat we struggled to sail safely downwind and stay in the game,' he added.