Whitsundays True Love enjoys the 2009 series

by Ian Grant on 2 Sep 2009 Crafty Whitsunday Sailing Club skipper Roger Down has sailed many enjoyable nautical miles at the helm of the 25 year old Bruce Farr designed 11.6 m sloop True Love.

Generally the comfortable cruiser racer becomes a racer rather than a cruiser because of the competitive attitude of her skipper and crew.

They proudly raced under their weathered Whitsunday Sailing Club ‘Battle Flag’ to finish with a silver medal in the Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week and continued to prove they are among the best Performance Handicap sailing crews in the Whitsunday Islands by winning the Bronze Medal in the Performance Handicap Division 2 class at the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week.

The numerous hours of experience in understanding the current flow and avoiding wind shadows played a major role when the True Love crew became involved in a friendly match race against club mate Tim Osborne in the smaller 23 year old Farr 1104 Rising Farrst on the almost windless Whitsunday Passage last Saturday.

Rising Farrst appeared to have the edge over True Love with her three point advantage and more consistent score over the previous six races.

But Roger Down and the True Love crew have never been known to back away from a challenge leaving their best race to last to finish a close second behind the West Australian skipper Mike Davies in Sandstone while the Rising Farrst crew struggled in the fickle breeze to finish seventh.

This race proved to be a supreme test of light wind sailing with the normally windy Whitsunday Passage taking on an out of character appearance with intermittent zephyrs disturbing the glassy calm sea state.

Basically the race turned into a test of patience and tactical strategy when all crews faced the challenge to maintain a consistent boat speed when they drift sailed through the ‘glass outs’.

Skipper Roger Down has experienced this type of fickle winds before and while he would prefer to have had the leeward rail pressed with wind he accepted the other alternative to sail most of course with the crew on the leeward rather than the windward side.

However while this was uncomfortable for the crew the tactic allowed True Love to improve her speed which ultimately provided both skipper and crew to be in a strong position to secure a major result when the sails were tensioned for the final windward slog to the finish.

They sailed every variable wind shift that blew over the deck of True Love and approached the Dent Passage finish line on a gaining tack but unfortunately failed by the narrow margin of 17 seconds to beat the corrected handicap winner Sandstone

Had they won True Love would have won the Silver Medal on count back from the Andrew Stoeckel skippered New South Wales yacht Integrity but the proud Roger Down was happy to accept the third place trophy.