Australian Youth Match Racing Champs - Gilmour battles for title

by Jennifer Crooks on 27 Sep 2013 At the Australian Youth Match Racing Championship, Sam Gilmour and his crew of Adam Negri, Cameron Seagreen and Mark Spearman, representing University of Western Australia, lead on countback from Harry Price and his crew of Angus Williams, Sam Ellis and Louie Collins, representing the host club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.

Gilmour had a slow start to the day dropping his first match against Murray Jones and then losing to Harry Price in the last flight of Round Robin one. Gilmour’s second Round Robin was much better with him scoring four bullets beating Harry Price in the last match of the day to take the lead in the Championship.

'We started slowly this morning – there were crew work errors and I wasn’t concentrating when I should have been and this led to us being given penalties in our match against Murray (Jones) and Harry (Price),' Gilmour said.

'They took advantage of that and we didn’t recover. The errors have come from us not sailing together that much and some of the crew have switched positions from last week to this week. After each match we talked about how we could improve for the next match and kept improving race by race.

'Our goal is to make it into the top four and set ourselves up well for the finals on Sunday,' Gilmour added.

Harry Price’s scorecard also showed six wins and two losses – his other loss of the day was to Milly Bennett from Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club. 'I’m pretty happy with how the team is performing as it’s really only been the second day we’ve been sailing together.'

'We got a few good starts that we were able to capitalise on. We managed to lock Sam (Gilmour) out of the start and then got a good lead on him the first time we were sailing against each other. We’ve had some really tight racing and great battles. Conditions were really enjoyable and everyone’s in great spirits,' Price said.

Price has spent the past month in Cyprus competing at the ISAF Youth World in the 29er class and this have given him a few more string to his bow. 'My 29er campaign helped me a lot tactics wise, knowing what’s fast and getting good boat positions,' he added.

Murray Jones and his crew of Jaidan Stevens, Cameron Gundy, Matt Stenta, represent the host club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, are currently in third position with five wins and three losses.

'We made a few mistakes which cost us some matches. I’m happy with my performance – I feel like I’m sailing better than last week (at the Australian Match Racing Championship),' Jones said.

'Today had its moments. We were a little slow to start and were sorting out a few problems, but then we got going. We had little things going wrong but we got those sorted by the end of the day.'

Principal Race Officer Denis Thompson got the first flight of the day away in a dying westerly breeze and then had to wait for the easterly to fill in. Once that came in, Thompson rolled through the flights relatively easily with a few course changes occurring when the easterly started to waft around.

Late in the afternoon the breeze had swung to a north easterly and provided pleasant racing conditions.

The Australian Youth Match Racing Championship is hosted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia and the new fleet of Elliott 7s are being thoroughly tested.

Racing is scheduled to continue tomorrow, Saturday 28 September, at 1015hrs and continue until Sunday 29 September. The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting a warm sunny day with northerly winds of about 10-15 knots turning westerly 15-25 knots in the middle of the day.