Melbourne to Stanley - 50 to 5

by John Curnow on 31 Oct 2009
These are not the odds of anything or a new TV Show hosted by an aging star who’s a walking ad for the dangers of plastic surgery. We’ll leave that to those at the track and editors of cheap magazines.

They are, in fact, the wind readings from the last 12 hours. Last night a massive, albeit short, storm ploughed through Melbourne with winds well into the fifty-knot bracket.

This was of considerable concern to the deep draught boats waiting in their pens at Sandringham Yacht Club (SYC), who have to head to startline for the 152 nautical mile 2009 Melbourne to Stanley race, part of the Ocean Racing Club of Victoria (ORCV) McConaghy Melbourne Offshore series, which heads across Bass Strait to Stanley, a firshing port on Tasmania's north western coast.

In quick consultation with ORCV's Melbourne to Stanley Race Director, Simon Dryden, and the wonders of the real-time weather radar on the 'Interweb', these boats stayed in their pens until it blew over, in under an hour. Why was it of concern?

Well if they did not get underway from SYC on schedule, these boats would not have made the start line at the Heads in time for the 04:30hrs flare. Port Phillip’s Heads are a good three and a half to five hour steam from their pens you see, depending on wind and tide.

All of which did not cause any concern to the shallower draft boats safely tucked up in the sensational new facilities at Queenscliff. On the way to the start, ‘Yoko’ did in fact report a burst of 60 knots. Glad they had the rags all sorted out before that arrived!

It’s quiet out there today in Bass Strait, which explains the five - as in knots. It’s all most of the boats are seeing and speeds are around that and less, depending on the vintage of the boat in question! It is also fairly quiet here in Stanley as the local festivities begin and they await the influx of the thirsty and hungry crews, who may well have sunburn to add to their ailments.

Race favourite, ‘Calm’, are 49nm down the track (just under a third of the way) with a current ETA 04:30hrs Sunday. Add four nautical miles back to Shogun’, another one and a half a miles to ‘Audi Centre Melbourne’ and the venerable Farr52 ‘Goldfinger’ has had the whip out and is just six and a half miles behind the leader.

Out on the proverbial mung bean flyer was ‘Godzilla’, but they are now back and right in it. The Tasmanian entries are a bit of a mix. The DK46, ‘Dekadence’, now ‘Creese Properties’ after the sale was completed to Hobart’s David Creese just yesterday, are still learning the new boat and have some 8nm to make up to the other DK ‘Extasea’.

The seasoned crew aboard ‘Matangi’ are in the top 10 in IRC and ‘Hummingbird’ from Hobart’s DSS is sitting pretty in the middle of the fleet.

Presently in AMS, ‘Extasea’ have it from ‘Godzilla’ then ‘Wicked’. In IRC it is all ‘Calm’, before ‘Extasea’ and ‘Shogun’. PHS has ‘Extasea’ in front, then ‘Godzilla’ with ‘INSX’ doing well for third, as you would expect from the Sills and the crew, who are our new Lord Warden Trophy holders.

It is just six to eight knots out there from the SSW with a sea fog, flat seas and visibility of around 200m, so it could well be such a long time until we see them.

Ultimately it’s a very light start to McConaghy Melbourne Offshore Championship this year and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that it will take them longer to get to Stanley’s famous Scallop Pies…

It looks like it will be a long night getting the fleet in and in turn, that means Peter Blake’s ‘Kontrol’ will get to hold the record for at least one more year.