Good line up for Three Peaks

by Peter Campbell on 2 Apr 2004 Circumnavigators Kanga Birtles and Tony Mowbray will add something new to their sailing logbooks when they compete for the first time in the Hydro Tasmania Three Peaks Race, Australia’s unique sailing and mountain running challenge over Easter.

Birtles, from Huskisson on the NSW South Coast, will join Steven Toth, also from Huskisson, in sailing the newly launched 14 metre Chamberlin bridge deck catamaran, Incinerator, in the Main Racing Division of this demanding event around the eastern coast of Tasmania that starts on Good Friday, 9 April.

Birtles, who finished fifth in the 1991 BOC Solo Race Around the World, will be renewing an old contest with the catamaran’s designer, Queenslander Rob Chamberlin and Tasmanian Terry Travers, whom he beat for line honours in the double-handed 1998 Trans Tasman Race.

Incinerator must be considered one of the favourites for the 2004 Hydro Tasmania Three Peaks, with two experienced long-distanced female runners on board, Jacqui Guy from Hobart and Louise Provin from Scotland.

Jacqui will be contesting her seventh Three Peaks and while this will be the first for Louise, she has been competing in similar long distance events in Scotland.

Mowbray, from Newcastle, who sailed solo around the world and recently made a voyage to Antarctica, has chosen a more relaxed Three Peaks Race. He will skipper the Beneteau 361, Harris Scarfe, in the Cruising Division with a large crew of sailors and runners from NSW and Victoria.

Rob Chamberlin and Terry Travers, winners of the last three Three Peaks Races, are competing again in the Main Racing Division with Orana Respite Mersey Pharmacy, their much-travelled 11.4 metre Chamberlin catamaran.

Joining them again will the winning team of sailor Peter Fletcher from Hobart and the two Victorian runners, Nigel Aylott and Andrew Kromar.

Another catamaran in the Main Racing Division is Complete Engineering Services, a Simpson 11.6 metre cat sailed by a Northern Tasmanian crew of sailors Peter Newman from Devonport, Peter Phillips (Latrobe) and Jamie Cooper (Lilydale) along with runners David Sweetman (Penguin) and Nigel Harris (Devonport).

Wellkown Wynyard yachtsman and sailmaker Steve Walker will skipper the fourth catamaran in the Main Racing Division, the Chamberlin-designed 9.2 metre Slingshot, again with a crew of sailors and runners from Northern Tasmania.

Other boats in the Main Racing Division are monohulls: Everybody Fitness, an Adams 13 metre sloop skippered by Jason van Zetton from Launceston, Haphazard, a Radford 14 skippered by Nick Edmunds from Sidmouth, sailing his 16th Three Peaks, and Funnel Web Spiders, a Hick 50, skippered by Ian Macfadyen, from Floraville, NSW,

Macfadyen and his wife, Glen, sailed Funnel Web Spiders in the 2003 Melbourne to Osaka double-handed race and are using the Three Peaks as a warm-up for the double-handed Trans Tasman Race in May.

Interest in the Fully Crewed Racing Division has grown this year, with the line-up including the other Radford 14, Wildcard (Richard Edmunds), Quality Equipment, Alf Doedens’ Farr 37 from Hobart, Apollonius, Julian Robinson’s Robinson 12, from Devonport on the Tamar River, and Underwater Video Systems, Jeff Cordell’s Mumm 36 from Hobart.

Four yachts are in the Cruising Division, Harris Scarfe (Tony Mowbray) from Newcastle, Genrx (Greg Hall) from Launceston, Kingstown Computer and Photo Centre (Ricard Brabazon) from Kingston Beach, and the S&S 34, Misty (Brian Claque) from Victoria.

The Hydro Tasmanian Three Peaks Race will set sail from Beauty Point in the Tamar River on Good Friday, with the first leg across eastern Bass Strait to Lady Barron on Flinders Island. Here the runners face a 65 km cross-country and mountain endurance run to the peak of Mt Strzelecki and back before the yachts start the second leg down the Tasmanian East Coast to Coles Bay followed by a climb to Mt Freycinet.

The final leg is around Tasman Island to Hobart where the runners must dash to the peak of Mt Wellington and back to Constitution Dock to compete the gruelling three to four day event.