Martin Burke wins Dragon States in Riga

by Peter Campbell on 13 Nov 2006
The International Dragon, the classic yacht of one-design classes, is having a resurgence of interest worldwide, including Sydney Harbour, with last week’s NSW State Championship underlining renewed interest in racing Dragons.

A fleet of 11 boats contested the eight-race series conducted by the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron last week and Dragon enthusiasts are predicting the regular Squadron Saturday fleet will rise to 20 boats by the season of 2007-2008.

The Squadron Dragon fleet has been boosted this season by several newcomers to the class who benefited from a mentoring program for helmsmen and crew during the winter months in Sydney

A feature of racing the Dragon, an Olympic class until the 1970s, is the close boat-for-boat competition and the NSW championship saw four different skippers win individual races.

However, consistency is the key to success in regatta racing and Martin Burke, at the helm of Riga, produced just that with a scoreboard of 1-2-1-2-2-1-2-7 for a final score of 11 points after one discard. By Saturday’s final race, he virtually had the series won.

Second place on 16 points went to Sidewinder, skippered by the veteran Olympian Carl Ryves whose crew includes Dick Sargeant, his crew on the Flying Dutchman, also named Sidewinder, at the Mexico City Olympics sailed at Acapulco in 1968. The third crewman varied during the regatta, including Carl's son Luke and James Cook.

Sidewinder had three wins in the Dragon States, but could not match the high-place consistency of Riga with a scorecard of 4-1-5-4-1-3-1-2.

Third place overall went to Robert Alpe, skippering Toogara to placings of 5-4-4-3-5-2-4-3 for 25 points in a close series with Abracadabra (David Seaton ) and Trio (Michael Bartley and James Bevis) which both finished on 26 points. Abracadabra and Trio each won one race.

Trio finished first in handicap results from Imagination (Martin Cooper) and Toogara.

Several races of the Dragon States were sailed in conjunction with the Squadron’s Twilight Series for Dragons and Etchells, with Martin Burke in Riga again finishing at the top of the leaderboard from Sidewinder, with Trio third overall and first on handicap.

In the Etchells Twilight Series, first place went to Max Whitnall at the helm of Dot with three first and a third for 6 points, winning without having to sail in the fifth race.

Second place went to Bushfire (Jervis Tilly) on 7 points who won the last race to finish one point ahead of Vincero (Nick Kingsmill and Gordon Maguire).