Whitehaven Beach Party Day

by Rob Kothe on 28 Aug 2008
Today is the famous Whitehaven Beach Party Day. A cloudy morning at Hamilton Island but the cloud will burn off by late morning.

The whitest beach in the world is one of the claims made about Whitehaven Beach.

The annual Beach Party which started in the early days of Hamilton Island Race Week has become popular too with Airlie Beach charter operators who take up to a thousand back packers there. For many Hamilton Island staff its the major party of the year. Sunsail, the largest charter operator here, only shuts for two days of the year - Christmas Day and Whitehaven Beach Party Day.

There is certainly plenty of eye candy and usually a host of celebrities.

Until 1999 this was the traditional second lay day during Race Week, then this scribe campaigning Sword of Orion, persuaded Warwick Hoban the Race Director at the time that the Racing Divisions, at that stage the IMS and PHS fleets wanted to race, so we worked together to design the Whitehaven Course.

It was a trapezoid which started upwind in the middle of Catseye Bay then after a windward leeward jinked over towards Teague Island for a windward leeward leg, with Firth Rock as a rounding mark, then through Solway Passage ending near the southern end of Whitehaven Beach.

Today the IRC and PHS divisions will race a simpler course around buoys.

It will be a relief for the fleet, at least one of whom, Bob Robertson’s Farr 40 Cracklin Rosie, has been forced to retire from the series after a serious Surprise Rock encounter. The Farr 40 has a split rudder and compressed keel.

Today Rob Bassett’s Bakewell-White 52 Wired will be back in the fleet. Yesterday she was side-lined while a new mast fitting was flow in from Auckland.

We will have pictures from Whitehaven later today, so check back to see the action.