Archambault Alegria wins another Audi - 2009 IRC Australian Title

by Rob Kothe on 31 Aug 2009
Sailing his Archambault 40RC Alegria to a last race win and overall victory in the final round in the Australian IRC Championship at Audi Race Week at Hamilton Island, delivers a second luxury Audi automobile to Queensland sailor Rod Jones.

Jones will claim the Perpetual Trophy designed by John Woulfe and the major prize of an Audi A6 allroad Quattro valued at AUD$115,000.

The inaugural winner of the Audi IRC Australian Championship in 2007, Rod Jones then sailed an Archambault 35 also called Alegria to victory and drove away in an Audi Q7 3.6 FSI quattro SUV then.

We interviewed Jones soon after he came ashore on Saturday at Hamilton Island after winning the IRC Racing Division 2 series and hence the overall 2009 Australian title.

‘It’s very exciting for us – much harder this time. The competition in the year that we missed I think stepped up and the competition in the 45 foot boat range – the divisions that we play in – is very tight. We’re particularly happy that we’ve won this one; this has been a hard one to win.

‘We’ve selected the boats, so we went to the Archambault 40RC because we knew that the numbers were correct for IRC and we knew that we could sail the boat with those numbers. They are good boats particularly well suited to the type of thing that we’re doing.

‘The Archambault 40RC is a purpose IRC designed boat in as much as they’ve taken into account all of the things that they can in relation to IRC and added it to the boat to enhance its rating. It’s a reasonably quick boat for its size; it’s not too heavy. It’s a particularly easy boat to sail with no vices; loves a bit of pressure; struggles a little bit in the really light air. We’ve managed to get away with that here.

‘It’s just a delightful boat. Quality wise they’re fantastic, but just a really good, consistent IRC performer.

‘We have worked hard and done a lot of training. The limitation of having the boat interstate most of the year makes it hard but we’ve travelled interstate quite a bit to train.

‘If we hadn’t made the mistake in the Gold Coast race and missed a sked we would have had four wins this year in the series; but we’ve had four moral wins anyway.

‘The team has been very committed and the team is the core of the team that we had in 2007, with a couple of changes and obviously some extra people, based on the fact that it’s a bigger boat.

'The team is myself; James Walker who’s our navigator IT specialist; Adrian Finglas who’s our tactician; Sean O’Rourke and Bucky Smith who are our trimmers – Sean being one of the junior up and comers in the 49er and match racing fleets and Bucky from the current Etchells World Champion crew – Garry White on the mainsheet; Greg McAllansmith in pit; James Chillman a young guy from Brisbane on the bow; Dale Sharp one of the J24 well known crew out of Belmont on the mast; Rod Young on the mast who is another Sunshine Coast guy; and that’s the core of the team.

'We’ve had a couple of other people float in and out when we’ve needed them. We’ve had Sarah Board from Brisbane on in this Regatta. Our normal mid bow /sewer guy Ben Calder is overseas with his wife at the SB3 Worlds; and Chris Annear from the Sunshine Coast is another guy who fills in for us.

‘Across the divisions there have been some great sailing; Michael Hiatt’s Farr 55 Living Doll have had an exceptional series. They’ve been very consistent and really playing it around the race course when we’ve seen them; they looked great. But we had a tough battle in our division.'

IRC Grand Prix Div 2 - Audi Hamilton Island Race Week

Series Results [IRC Div2] up to Race 9 (Drops = 1)

Place	Sail No	Boat Name	Skipper	Sers Score	Race 9	Race 8	Race 7	Race 6	Race 5	Race 4	Race 3	Race 2	Race 1
1	Q345	ALEGRIA	Rod Jones	20.0	1.0	5.0	4.0	1.0	4.0	2.0	2.0	[9.0]	1.0
2	SM46	DEKADENCE	Philip Coombs	22.0	2.0	1.0	6.0	4.0	1.0	1.0	5.0	2.0	[6.0]
3	YC400	TWO TRUE EVOLUTION	Andrew Saies	27.0	3.0	7.0	1.0	2.0	7.0	4.0	1.0	[8.0]	2.0
4	G8710	RATIONALE AKATEA	Ian Holten	33.0	5.0	2.0	5.0	3.0	5.0	5.0	3.0	5.0	[8.0]
5	NZL11111	GEORGIA ONE	Jim Farmer	35.0	6.0	4.0	3.0	5.0	[9.0]	3.0	8.0	1.0	5.0
6	6530	CRACKLIN ROSIE	Robbo Robertson	39.0	4.0	[8.0]	7.0	6.0	2.0	7.0	4.0	6.0	3.0
7	M330	SHAMROCK	Tony Donnellan	45.0	8.0	6.0	2.0	7.0	6.0	[9.0]	6.0	3.0	7.0
8	SM47	TERRA FIRMA	Nicholas Bartels	50.0	7.0	3.0	8.0	8.0	3.0	8.0	9.0	4.0	[9.0]
9	R33	CHUTZPAH	Bruce Taylor	59.0	9.0	9.0	9.0	[9.0]	8.0	6.0	7.0	7.0	4.0

'It’s been very tricky, sailing in light conditions, because the pressures haven’t been consistent around the race course. I think there’s a couple of times where with the ways things have worked out, the gods have favoured us, and there have obviously been a couple of times when they haven’t.

‘Phil Coombs and his team on Dekadence sailed a particularly good regatta. The light air suits the DK46 and they really sailed the boat well. Luckily we won today otherwise they would have won the series.

‘The new little First 40 Beneteau, Andrew Saies’ Two True Evolution with Michael Spies aboard – they sailed really well too. That’s a potent little boat.

‘I think the other boats in the fleet Atakea and Georgia and Cracklin Rosie were always there; you couldn’t afford to slip too far off the game while they were on your hammer.

‘It was a really tight little bunch this time around; there were seconds in it from first to fourth or fifth in a couple of occasions.

‘Our last race was the Molle Island Race, the race started in not a lot of air, but fortunately with an ebbing tide. Once we got out into the passage there was about five knots true.

‘We ran with an asymmetric sail across to the southern end of the South Molles, got round the back of the Molles, and then our entire tactical group did a great job.

‘Adrian, Bucky and James kept us in the pressure all the time and we were on fire down there. We got right onto the back of Decadence and a couple of the big boats; just had a blinder; and then we all parked about three miles from the northern end of North Molle. The breeze just stopped and we all drifted around there, fortunately still with a bit of ebb tide and slowly drifted towards where they eventually shortened the course.

'About 20 minutes before the end of the islands we got a slight breeze around the corner – just a little bit of an easterly – and managed to come up there in about three or four knots of air. Fortunately they shortened it or I think we’d be out there for dinner.

‘It wasn’t pretty watching the other boys (IRC Dvision 1) come home, I can tell you.

‘It’s been tough weather for the Race Management Team, in the lightest winds ever in the 26 year history of this regatta. They’ve done a great job too.

‘Anytime Denis Thompson (the Regatta Director) is involved you know that it’s a proactive race committee. They know what they’re doing and they take the right decisions. We were only discussing it this morning on the way out there; how difficult it must have been for the race committee but what a great job they’ve done all week.

'They’ve been faultless and it makes it really easy for the guys on the race course when you’ve got confidence in your race committees and you know that they’re going to do the right things and you know that they’ve got the experience to make the good decisions.'

The Audi IRC Australian Championship is made up of four events, of which three count, in the series scorecard- the newly renamed Audi Victoria Week (that was Skandia Geelong Week), Audi Sydney Harbour Regatta, Audi Sydney Gold Coast Race and the final event, Audi Hamilton Island Race Week.

Will Jones aim for a third Australian title and a third Audi?

‘Oh yes!’ He said ‘I’ve got a couple of Audis now; I’m fully in love with the brand. We traded the one that we won two years ago on a newer one not that long ago and I’ve got a little A3, so I’ve got to figure out what to do after all this. I figure I’ll get home first and think about it because it’s a while before we get hold of it so I don’t have to make any rash decisions.

I think the team’s pretty committed to going around next year so we’ll try and make it three.’

2009 AUDI IRC AUSTRALIAN CHAMPIONSHIP

Place	Boat Name	Owner / Skipper	Discard Applied
1	ALEGRIA	Rod Jones	2.333
2	WOT NOW	Graeme Wood	5.652
3	LIVING DOLL	Michael Hiatt	7.500
4	RUTH MAGIC	Ruth & Peter Hill	7.846