2016 J24 Australia Nationals – Black Prince reclaims his throne

by Simon Grain on 10 Jan 2016 The final day was a series of ups and downs. Steve Girdis sailing Convicts Revenge came up from third to claim second and Jet went down to third. With the first race sailed in lighter airs Jet had the edge on speed and moved closer to the top with another win, Dave was getting worried, but as Brendan reminds us all that Simon hadn’t had his bad race yet and he did in the third race of the day – our new drop!

With the breeze building throughout the day Pacemaker reeled off a string of firsts and Convicts a string of seconds – game over.

Brendan and Hugo came in with consistent thirds and fourths to cement their overall fourth and fifth positions. Kirsty steering Robyn Coombs’ Hyperactive took out sixth even with an apparently spectacular Chinese on one of the runs. Ron Thomson won the Thommo Cup but Janette did a great job sailing in the rough conditions to record a very consistent result mid fleet. The Handicap result mirrored the One Design except that Hugo took out third overall from Jet in fourth.

The committee and club excelled at a memorable presentation dinner, with the usual ‘short Scottish’ speech from President Doug MacGregor and MC for the raffle and other comments from the classes funniest resident wit John Neville.

The Victorian committee did a great job with the whole organisation of the regatta, it’s a huge job and the team brought it together very well, the club’s race management volunteers lead by Graeme Watt and Craig Wiley also excelled on and off the track, a big thank you on behalf of all the competitors.

Thanks also to our long time sponsor MonJohn Security for once again supporting the regatta, also to John Neville’s Data Agility and Iguana Design for contributing to the success of the event. Remember if you have a need for security, IT and graphic design, please support our sponsors where you can.

Doug organised Louie Ferrero to come and take pictures both on and off the water and the results are spectacular (well done all those who waved at the right time or put their boats in spectacular positions for the camera). Louie’s pics will be available on a website he is making this weekend, so as soon as I have the details I will post them here. I strongly suggest you have a look and support Louie, I think he will be a great and valuable addition to our class and the marine picture business in the future. I hope to be able to get some of these pics for the website here so come back soon for more boat gazing.