Sail Mooloolaba 2013 - Hot Fleet for Sports Boat Winter Nationals
by Darren Spence on 31 May 2013
No Limits - Sail Mooloolaba 2013 Teri Dodds
http://www.teridodds.com
A record fleet expected to exceed 25 boats is set to line up for the first ever Australian Sports Boat Association (ASBA) Winter National Titles being held in conjunction with Sail Mooloolaba over the weekend of June 22-23 offshore at Mooloolaba.
At least three crews are heading up from Sydney for the weekend along with individual crew members from Western Australia sailing on a number of boats. If some Victorian owners can scrape the ice off their machines and make the long trip, it will be a truly national fleet.
The Queensland fleet has embraced the event with six boats from Brisbane, four from Noosa and two from the Gold Coast so far. There will also be a joint Bundaberg/Townsville crew sailing Guilty Pleasures V (John Learmonth), Vivace (John Rae) from Mackay, Situation Normal (David Mann) from Gladstone and Rip it Up (Jamie Berndt) from Hervey Bay.
The event has also attracted a wide variety of designs, shapes and sizes – just like the bodies sailing them. The most prevalent is the Shaw 650 design with five entrants so far and what will be the largest gathering of the Rob Shaw designed boats in Australia.
Amongst the fleet will be a number of QLD and National Champion boats along with boats and crews doing their first ever Sports Boat event.
The entire fleet will be vying to be the crew to get their name on the new Perpetual Trophy for this first time event. Results will be split ensuring like boats are racing for the same silverware as well as overall honours – overall, two divisions and a performance division. This ensures no one goes home without a crack at some great prizes from Gill Australia, Hogs Breath Cafe & 3 Oceans Wine Company. There is also a lucky prize draw prize provided by Evolution Sails on the Gold Coast up for grabs and a fleet dinner at Hogs Breath Cafe Mooloolaba.
This is the first of many Sports Boat friendly events already on the calendar for the 2013-14 season. The fleet travels to Airlie Beach in August for Race Week and then onto Southport Yacht Club for the QLD State Titles on October. The 2014 National Titles are the big event for the fleet with a big drive this year for east coasters to Fremantle in Western Australia in January.
Check out the ASBA web site for all coming event and fleet news.
ASBA and Sail Mooloolaba will also be using Face book and Twitter to keep followers of the event up to date during an after the racing each day. All the information on the event can be found at www.asba.org.au or www.sailmooloolaba.yachting.org.au.
If you want to link to this article then please use this URL: www.sail-world.com/110052
