Jarvin early leader Australian Match Champs

by Sailsportz on 10 Sep 2005 In absolutely perfect match racing conditions, 13 Flights (39 matches) of the 2005 Rutgerson Deck Hardware Australian Match Racing Championships were completed today, leaving nine flights remaining to complete the Round Robin stage.

Early series leader, the Seve Jarvin crew has seven wins with just one loss to Katie Spithill's all female team (Nicky Souter, Kylie McKillop, Sarah Roberts-Thompson and Angela Farrell), who also had a good day with six wins and two losses, recovering well from a boom vang failure during the pre-start of their first match.

Jarvin's crew includes Sam Newton, Ben Croucher, and his father, well known sailing identity Steve ‘Mothy’ Jarvin, who is perhaps more at home crewing for the likes of Dennis Conner. However, father and son stated at a former match event that they would love to sail together and each has the utmost respect for the other’s ability.

The RNZYS crew of Dave Wete, Josh Puckey and Nick Blackman, skippered by Adam Minoprio, finished the day with three wins and two losses from the five races they were scheduled to sail. Minoprio explains how their day went:

‘The racing today was really good. We started off with about five knots of wind and built to round 10 knots by lunch time. We raced Matthew Chew first up and came from behind to pass him on first downwind leg and extended for a comfortable win.

‘Next up was defending champion Michael Dunstan, we lost the start but with good roll tacking up wind we came back to being lee bowed by him on port. With a tricky top mark manoeuvre and a bit of luck we sent him the wrong side of the top mark and us the right side, plus he hit the mark. This gave us a comfortable lead and a win.

‘Next we had Keith Swinton from Perth. We beat him on the start, and led the whole first beat to be passed by his superior boatspeed just before the top mark. Keith went on to win.

‘We then raced Mark Dorling and came from behind for another close win. Our last match for the day had us race Seve Jarvin. We won the start, but we got too greedy and he passed us on first beat to take the race.

‘Today we feel we had the harder half of the fleet and tomorrow we are on for the final six races of the flight and have to do well to make top six overall.

‘For us, we had the rest of the day off as we are not scheduled to sail again until Flight 17. Today the organisers reached Flight 13 today.’

Defending champion Michael Dunstan, with crew Murray Walters, Ben Lamb and Simon Reffold, also sit on six wins and two losses, followed by crews skippered by Keith Swinton and Pat Langley on four wins apiece.

With competitors having varying numbers of matches remaining, it is too early to speculate on which six teams will progress to Stage 3, the repechage round.

Torvar Mirsky's team from Fremantle, Western Australia, kept the umpires on their toes with three wins, but with six matches left to sail, have plenty of opportunity to increase their score.

Crew member Steve Walters even found time for a dip in Pittwater in between races. Event sponsor, Jan Scholten, managed only one win from five starts yesterday, but all those matches were very close and he also has six matches remaining. Dual Governors Cup winner, Murray Gordon, is in a similar position.

Sailing with RSYS's Mark Dorling, who has scored two wins so far, is triple World Youth champ Nathan Outteridge, who commented, ‘these are just awesome boats (Force 24’s) for match racing.’

PRO Denis Thompson ran overlapping flights all day with no breakdowns and racing came to a halt only because of lack of daylight.

Tomorrow’s forecast is for north-westerly winds of 10 knots, swinging to the north-east and increasing to 20 knots in the afternoon, promising more exciting rides in the new Force 24 yachts.

Score Tallies for the partially completed Stage - 1 Round Robin:

7 Wins Seve Jarvin

6 Wins Michael Dunstan

6 Wins Katie Spithill

4 Wins Pat Langley

4 Wins Keith Swinton

3 Wins Adam Minoprio

3 Wins Torvar Mirsky

2 Wins Mark Dorling

2 Wins Evan Walker



1 Win Jan Scholten

1 Win Murray Gordon

0 Wins Matthew Chew


Host Club site: www.rpayc.com.au

Amended by Sail-World