GRUNDIG XENA DAMAGED IN REEF GROUNDING

by Ian Grant on 19 Aug 2001 Sean Langman’s high performance Sydney sloop Grundig Xena ranked as Australia’s fastest offshore racing yacht has ‘bombed’ her chance to win the line honours title in the 2001 International Hahn Premium Race Week at Hamilton Island.

Late this afternoon Grundig Xena struck the reef fringing Plum Pudding Island when she was preparing for the final tacks to win the 82 n/ml Coral Sea race.

Grundig Xena hit an outlying bombe at 8 knots with the force of impact injuring some of her crew as they were flung about the deck when she grounded to a sudden stop.

Unfortunately this incident climaxed an unhappy day for the Grundig Xena crew when the impact damage was revealed after being towed off the reef by Hamilton Island Game Fish launches Balek 111 and Renegade.

She has suffered extensive keel bed damage and will be road freighted from Hamilton Island and repaired in Sydney.

This was a race, which her crew would rather forget with the flying open 60-class sloop famed for breaking the Brisbane-Gladstone race record last Easter featuring in an unusual run of incidents.

Their race was not in real good shape at the start when her keel became entangled in the anchor rope holding the pin end buoy in place.

The crew were unaware until they looked astern to find the Hahn Premium buoy ‘surfing’ behind.

Skipper Langman was forced to stall the yacht while his sailing master David Witt dived overboard to cut the buoy anchor-line clear.

Unfortunately their line honours hopes crashed again when Grundig Xena was forced into a crash tack and the required penalty turns following a port and starboard breach with the smaller Gladstone sloop Restless skippered by Ray Hobbs.

Her crew who had sailed more than 50 miles with the start mark ground tackle still attached to her keel stopped sailing again off Hayman Island while one of her crew dived below to remove a twisted rope and anchor form her keel.

However when Langman and crew settled back into the race Grundig Xena excelled to produce unmatched speed and seemed poised to score a line honours win when she hit the reef within sight of the finish line.

This unfortunate accident allowed the smaller Sydney sloop After Shock (Colin Oneil) to sail past and secure a 1 minute 51 second win over George Snow’s Brindabella with Bob Oatley’s Another Duchess a further 56 seconds astern.