Australian Team Racing Championship - RYCT sailors win

by Peter Campbell on 9 Jun 2014 Three young sailors from the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, George Jones, Elliott Noye and Matt Himson, with three Optimist sailors from Sandringham Yacht Club as their lightweight crews, have won the Australian Team Racing Championship sailed on Melbourne’s Albert Park Lake over the weekend.

With the three younger crew of Matthew Goss, Phillip George and Archer Disney the RYCT/SYC team, called the Talladega Nights, came from behind to outsail the For the Lads team, the skippers being three young Irishmen now living in Melbourne.

Third place overall went to another team of RYCT sailors, Royals Blue, which made the semi-finals on a countback from Victoria’s Team Sorrento.

Noye, Jones and Himson are all well-known Laser sailors but learned the skills of team racing representing the Hutchins School in the interschool team racing on the Derwent.

To achieve a light weight crew they enlisted three young Optimist sailors from Sandringham Yacht Club as their for’ard hands, with each skipper having to not only helm their boat but also make the tactical decisions in this complex type of dinghy racing.

The winning team was in third place in overall standings after the first round-robin, behind the Irish team, For the Lads, and Victoria’s Team Sorrento which headed results from the first round-robin.

Team Sorrento lost its lead in the second round-robin while Royals Blue made up a two-race deficit to reach the top three teams for the finals. For the Lads gained top place from Talladega Nights, also on a countback.

Under the team racing rules only three teams reached the finals, with the winner being the first to score three wins. Also, the leading team going into the finals started the grand final with an allocated win.

Talladega Nights won its semi-final 3-0 again Ryot’s Royals Blues team of skippers Eddy Hargreaves, Morgan Davies and Gabriel Morrison and crew Will Wallis, Brendan Crisp and Fraser Marshall.

The Tasmanians then lined up for the grand final against For the Lads, comprising Irish skippers Aidan Laverty, David White and Liam Elderston with three members of Xavier Sailing Club, including Karen Sullivan and Tom Cotter, as their crews.

Although For the Lads had an allocated win, Talladega Nights won the grand final with three wins, an official score of three - one.

Tasmanian Murray Jones, who was chairman of the jury for the event, said conditions had been ideal for team racing with little between the top three teams in the fleet of 12 teams representing Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Ireland. A total of 96 races were sailed going into the semi-finals and grand final.

The Australian team racing championship was conducted jointly by Albert Park Yacht Club and Albert Sailing Club, with the 2015 nationals again to be held on Albert Park Lake over the 2015 June long weekend.