Star performances in strong winds

by Ian Grant on 19 Aug 2009
The tropical trade winds gusting to 25 knots on the open waters of the Whitsunday Passage provided the Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week fleet with a day of spectacular sailing today.

As expected there were reports of crew fatigue and damage with snapped main halyards to bent and broken spinnaker prodders while several crews experienced the fear factor during wild broaches on the spinnaker legs.

Raptor the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron Sport Boat skippered by Mark Buchbach was an early casualty when their main halyard snapped under the wind load.

'It simply snapped ending what looked like being a good result for us' crew person Graham Sheering said.

Unfortunately the incident has ended the chance for Raptor to feature in championship after Cam Rae and his Royal Geelong Yacht Club crew expressed their fresh wind sailing skills to finish with a 1-2-1 to now control the point score with a 5 point lead over Guilty Pleasures (Leon Thomas) of Townsville while West Australian Heath Townsend remains a title threat at the helm of the Melges 24 What Tha.

Southport Yacht Club skipper Shane Smith has added another major championship to his career logbook after he steered the modified Blazer 23 Musto to her class championship win with a race to spare.

Smith and his younger crew mates Adam Lahey and Jacob Restall clearly won 9 of the 11 races and were only eight seconds short of recording a perfect score when they head into tomorrow’s final promising to score another win leaving their SB3 Dart class rivals Jamie Jochheim (Airlie Sails) and Paul Hunt (Beer Lao) to stage a boat on boat match race for the minor places.

Finally there has been a separation in the tactical struggle to win the prestigious IRC class championship after the Ray Roberts skippered Cookson 50 Evolution Racing entered today’s race leading on count back from the recently launched RP 52 Scarlet Runner (Robert Date) and Michael Hiatt’s Farr 55 Living Doll.

Scarlet Runner won the start and maintained the lead to Mandalay Point when Living Doll broke away to take control of the line honours.

However they failed to produced the required all angle sailing speed to shake Evolution Racing off their wake.

The canting keel Evolution Racing maintained unmatched speed on the long spinnaker run to easily claim the more important fastest corrected course time by a convincing 5 minute 53 seconds from Living Doll with Scarlet Runner another 15 seconds astern.

'Our new square top main from the Evolution Sails loft has worked perfectly over the complete range of winds' Skipper Ray Roberts said.

Evolution Racing which won the 2008 series on count back over the past generation Living Doll appears to have the speed and crew experience to capitalize on her 1 point lead over Living Doll and Scarlet Runner but that will have to be proved when the three crews who are separated by only two points enter what promises to be an interesting final on Pioneer Bay tomorrow.