Skandia Geelong Week Team’s Trophy goes to CYCA

by Di Pearson on 28 Jan 2008
Sydney Cruising Yacht Club of Australia team of Patrice Six (Tony Kirby), Quest (Bob Steel) and Wot Yot (Graeme Wood) has won the hotly contested Teams Trophy at Skandia Geelong Week.

As winner of the Audi Series Division 1 trophy, Steel’s TP52 Quest was integral to the CYCA’s win, as was third overall placegetter Wot Yot, another of the successful TP52 designs at Skandia Geelong Week.

Patrice Six, Kirby’s X-Yacht design, was demoted from its Division 2 third place overall in the Audi Series late last evening, relegated to fifth place overall when it was discovered the race committee had missed finishing two boats in a flurry of close finishers in the final race yesterday.

Kirby was obviously disappointed with the end result, but happy the CYCA in Sydney was able to hold onto the Teams Trophy, as the team had enough points in the bank to withstand Patrice’s two place drop.

Bob Steel, on his first trip to Skandia Geelong Week, was over the moon. Not only did he and the Quest crew win the Audi Series in the grand prix division giving them joint leadership in the Audi IRC Championship with Division 2 winner, Philosophers Club, he also led his club to the Teams Trophy victory.

“It’s been a great few days. I’m glad we came. This is a great regatta and we’ll be back. The racing was of the highest calibre and we enjoyed the race courses at both Williamstown and Geelong,” Steel said of the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria and Royal Geelong Yacht Club hosted events.

Six three-boat teams raced for the Trophy; the CYCA team winning by a margin of 17 points from Sandringham Yacht Club in Melbourne, represented by the always well-sailed Elliott 11 Veloce (Phil Simpfendorfer), Chris Dare’s brand new Corby 49 Flirt and Cougar II, Alan Whiteley’s recently purchased TP52.

Cougar II’s final day performance was enough for Whiteley to snatch second place overall from Wot Yot in the Audi IRC Series and helped take the Sandy team to a 15 point advantage over third placegetters, Royal Yacht Club of Victoria.

“We were very lucky to even start the final race of the series,” said Whiteley. “We tore a 1½ metre section in our main just before the start. We did a quick repair job with sticky back tape – we were very fortunate,” he said.

Whiteley told how they were thrilled just to compete at Skandia Geelong Week. “We fractured our chain plate in the Hobart race. Thommo (crew member Andrew Thompson) did a great job to get us here. It was a great series and we had great racing with the other two TP52’s.

Having Quest and Wot Yot here from Sydney helped lift our skills on Cougar II. We only put her in the water five months ago, so we have a bit of catching up to do on the other two,” he said.

The ‘Royals’ team was made up of the Adams 10 Executive Decision (Grant Botica), Bruce Taylor’s new Caprice 40, Chutzpah, and the Cookson 50 Living Doll (Michael Hiatt).

Taylor’s new boat was built for ocean racing running and reaching conditions, not for the shorter round the cans racing which is the main thrust of Skandia Geelong Week. Taylor’s wishes nearly came true in the Passage Race on day 3 when the fleet experienced 18 knots from the north-west for the first half of the race. Unfortunately those conditions did not hold.

“My boat does not sail well around the buoys,” said Taylor, “but we had fun here anyway. We always have a good time at Skandia Geelong Week,” he added.

The Teams Trophy was awarded to the highest scoring three-boat team in the seven-race Audi Series at Skandia Geelong Week.

For all information on Skandia Geelong Week, go to: www.geelongweek.com