The Great Race a huge success

by Helen Allardice on 13 Feb 2007 Congratulations and thank you to all competitors who competed in this year's Great Race on the weekend, starting from the Southport Yacht Club! How good is it to be part of such a big event with so many competitors from all divisions.

You were rubbing shoulders with some fairly weighty people on the weekend and I'd like to make some special mentions here: Thank you to Matt Belcher and Nick Behrens who are currently ranked Number 1 in the World for gracing us with their presence on their 470!

Thank you to the 13 x F18's who joined us literally the weekend before they head north to compete in the Seawind F18 Worlds in Yepoon! Good luck there guys and it was a pleasure watching you use our course as your testing zone!

Thank you to all who traveled some serious miles to get to this race - to Aaron on the 49er from Townsville (hope your house is still standing when you get back), to the cats from Bundaberg, others from Mackay and of course 'The Nude' people from Sydney! It was also a pleasure to see those old Classic 18 footers out there strutting there stuff too, thanks for the effort guys!

We had a few damages and breakages along the way - and my thoughts are with all of you who didn't see the finishing line - but there is always next year - we hope to see you come back and try again!

A big thank you to the (let me count them) 70 odd volunteers manning the support and waystation boats, and to the staff at SYC and RQYS! We worked well as a team! Thank you again!

I think its safe to say we annihilated the first years records which up until now still stood proud! Don't forget of course the start was slightly different to previous years - we got rid of that whole upwind/fighting tide bit, but still - these records are to be proud of!

Congrats go to Richard Reynolds and Lissa McMillan on the B14 'The Nude' with an elapsed time of 04:07:29 (04:15:08 corrected time) taking out the monohull record; and to Brad Collett & Lucas McDonald on the F18 Capricorn
'Fibre Foam' with an elapsed time of 02:57:18 (04:13:17 corrected time)!

Congrats to Rebecca Metcher for being the first Female Skipper across the line on her Cobra Cat and to Lissa McMillan for being the first Female Crew on the B14.

And Finally - Thank you to our sponsors Ronstan www.ronstan.com , Sports Super Centre www.sportssupercentre.com.au , Sailtech Australia www.sailtech.com.au , Norco Milk www.norco.com.au ; Natural Oz Clean www.natozclean.com and Marrvale Painting Contractors for supplying us with goodies in the competitors race bags and of course for the prizes!

Top Three Results in each Division:

Division 1
COOL CHANGE - Colin Melcher
NIGHTMARE O.H.S - Peter Lahey
PRD/ BANK OF QLD - Matthew Belcher

Division 2
THE NUDE - Richard Reynolds
OSHIN - Aaron Linton
OCEAN GRAPHICS - Craig Padman

Division 4
BIG RIG - Sandilands
TRIVIAL PURSUIT - Adrian Fawcett
HOODLUM - Ben Davis

Division 5
FIBRE FOAM - Brad Collett
CHOPPER THE GAME - Neville Thompson
SUNSTATE HOBIE - Mal Gray

Combined
FIBRE FOAM - Brad Collett
CHOPPER THE GAME - Neville Thompson
SUNSTATE HOBIE - Mal Gray