Quest, Doyle-Fraser, D4 triumph at Hamilton Island

by John Hearne on 27 Sep 2002 Hamilton Island Race Week has become the premier race week in Australia, based on Hamilton Island in the Whitsunday group of North Queensland at a time when the rest of Australia is still in winter.

It attracts regular entries of up to 200 yachts from all over Australia and New Zealand. Invariably, there are a number of boats and charters from places such as Hong Kong and even the occasional US entrant.
Quest, the Bob Steel owned N/M 46 was back this year after winning the IMS division and Australian IMS Championship at the 2001 event.

In the intervening period Quest had been converted from the inline spreader /runner rig with overlapping headsails to a swept spreader/non overlapping rig.

We took the opportunity on the changeover in January of this year to replace the now redundant D4 overlapping inventory with a set of D4 Carbon/HM Twaron sails. The 2 reef mainsail , Light , Medium and Heavy jibs where all built using Carbon/HM Twaron in a 60/40 mix and clear UV films. The UV films are there to protect the aramid yarn as the carbon is essentially impervious to UV exposure.

With the increasing decline of IMS racing in Australia, Quest was entered in the 32 boat IRC fleet which included a number of very well sailed Beneteau 40.7's , the new Beneteau 36.7 , a Farr 52 OD in IRC mode , a couple of Sydney 38's sailing non class and any number of typically well sailed IRC yachts.

Quest achieved a tremendous win with a scorecard of 4, 6, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 , 1 in the nine race series to win by a margin of 42 points. This margin covered 2nd to 11th places overall !

Quest sailed with Doyle Fraser Production Manager Mike Green on the helm and Design Director Brad Stephens on mainsail.

This upwind inventory on Quest has now been used continuously since January including 2 major offshore races of 380 and 480 nm , the whole of the CYCA Winter Series which is conducted every week from the beginning of May until the end of July and this just concluded Hamilton Island Race Week.

The D4 Carbon sails continue to look superb and are living up to all the promises that our extensive testing indicated.
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Brad Stephens
Design Director, Doyle-Fraser Sails
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