Yachts flock to the Bay Trailable Yacht Race

by Colin Verrall on 7 May 2013 Bay Trailable Yacht Race 2013 - Labour Day long weekend from May does little to dampen the enthusiasm of trailable yachts from North Queensland to Melbourne in the south for this most prestigious event on the trailable yacht calendar.

It is expected that this passage race out of the Tin Can Bay Inlet, through the Great Sandy Strait marine national park with the heritage listed Fraser Island to the east and into Hervey Bay will attract large fleets of trailable yachts into the foreseeable future both from Queensland and the southern states as their sailing winds down with the onset of the cold winter months.

A quality fleet fought hard to wrest the coveted Corrected Time trophy cups from last year’s winners.

The 33rd annual Bay to Bay Trailable Yacht Race saw Sunshine Coast based Bruce Nix in the modified Hartley 18 Hardly Normal sailed close to his CBH rating to win the Standard Monohull CBH cup. Graham Coffey returned from Sydney to claim back the Australian Sports Boat Association SMS sports monohull cup with a well prepared boat and crew and an impeccable tactical race sailed his Thompson 8 Rush under that huge blue spinnaker just above his SMS rating to narrowly win from Matt Bonzer out of Nelson’s Bay NSW in his Melges 24 Watch Me. Chris Chapman in Coco an Ostac Tramp Tri sailed above his PBH rating to win the standard multihull cup and George Owen in the Tony Considine Mad Max Grainger 101 showed the large sports multihull fleet a clean set of rudders to convincingly regain the OMR sports multihull cup and PBH trophy.

Mixed fleet racing is made possible through boat rating systems of CBH standard monohulls, SMS sports monohulls and OMR multihull that are applied to the elapsed times of boats of different speed capability and PBH Bay to Bay rating systems that makes allowance for different skipper and crew abilities and age factors of each boat.

There is always strong interest in being the fastest boat in each of the 4 boat types that contest the event. In 2013 the fastest boats across the course were Type 1 standard monohull Queensland designed and built Noosa 620 Midnight Madness Max Marian, Type 2 sports monohull 3m wide Bruce Tardrew No Limits Stealth 8 and 2.5m wide Rush Thompson 8 Graham Coffey, Type 3 standard multihull Chris Chapman in Coco Ostac Tramp Tri and George Owen in Mad Max Grainger 101.

Of the 135 strong fleet approximately 90 are standard monohull allocated to Divisions 2, 3 and 4 with the following trophies won.

Division 2 -1st Place CBH Peter McKenzie Le Rossignol Ross 780; first Place PBH Guy Meakin Peggy Austral 8
Division 3 - first Place CBH Bruce Nix Hardly Normal Hartley 18; first Place PBH Glenn Frost Heartbeat Castle 650
Division 4 - first Place CBH 413 Peter Taylor Pathfinder Adams 21; first Place PBH David Cook Ivana Careel 18

The Type 2 Sports Monohull entrants increased to a strong field of 18 quality boats including a return of the Elliott 7s with first Place PBH Bruce Tardrew No Limits Stealth 8.

The Rob Legg Queensland designed and built trailable yacht is still the strongest class in the event and the Rob Legg Trophy for the first placed RL on PBH corrected time was Paul Harris on RL 24 swing keel Steel Away.

The complete trophy list and results can be down loaded from the event website, go www.herveybaysailingclub.org.au

The Hervey Bay Sailing Club has conducted this event for 33 years now and we remain grateful for the support of our current major naming rights sponsor the Hervey Bay Boat Club and all other current and past sponsors, supporters and entrants.