Maria Island Yacht Race line honours to Mr Kite

by Peter Campbell on 21 Nov 2009
The radical ocean racing yacht Mr Kite this evening took line honours in the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania's Maria Island Race after a boat-for-boat duel up the Derwent River to the finish of the 190 nautical mile ocean race
around Tasmania's East Coast.

Skippered by owner Andrew Hunn, a prominent Hobart neuro-surgeon and champion yachtsman, the win has come after several seasons of luckless racing for the 40-footer, designed by UK-based, expat Australian Andrew Cape.

Mr Kite overtook the bigger Marineline/Focal, skippered by Olympian Gary Smith, near the John Garrow Light at Lower Sandy Bay, and crossed the finish line under off Castray Esplanade at 18:10:05 this evening, almost seven
minutes ahead of Marineline/Focal which finished at 18:16:59.

By 19:30 hours, five boats had finished - Dekadence (David Creese) at18:47:00, Valheru (Tony Lyall) at 19:08:43 and Dr Who (Rod Jackman) at 10:16:59. At that stage 42 South (Mark Ballard) and Auch (David Bean) were off Lower Sandy Bay sailing in a fading southerly breeze.

Handicap results for the IRC, AMS and PHS divisions will not be announced until tomorrow when all the fleet has finished the race overnight, with the Snook 30 Kaiulani (Malcolm Cooper) last in the fleet.

The finish, in a light 5-8 knot sou'sou'westerly breeze, was in total contrast to the near galeforce southerly in which the 30-boat fleet started on Friday evening, forcing six yachts to retire within the first two hours of the race.

Retirements reached seven when the only catamaran in the fleet, Jean-Pierre Ravant's Slingshot, was dismasted shortly after noon today as she was sailing south off Marion Bay.

The Maria Island Race is the first race win for the now blue-hulled Mr Kite, a 40-footer with a state-of-the-art canting keel and for'ard canard centreboard, square-topped mainsail and long bowsprit that enables her to carry a huge Code 0 reaching headsail in light winds.

Since her launching, however, she had been plagued with mechanical problems associated with the canting keel operation, retiring from more races than she finished.

'She's a new look boat now and everything operated perfectly,' crew member Stephen 'Rowdy' McCullum said after crossing the finish line.

'Andrew (Hunn) should take the credit for the 'new look' Mr Kite, overseeing solutions to the mechanical problems and investing in new jibs, the flat head mainsail and the Code 0 which played an important part in our win in the Maria Island Race,' he added.

Marineline/Focal led for most of the 190 nautical mile race, opening up a clean margin by the time she rounded the northern tip of Maria Island, off Orford, about 7am today. However, as the morning breeze freshened and back from south-east to east and then to the north-east the faster downwind boats, Valheru, Mr Kite and She's the Culprit started cutting down the lead.

By the time Marineline/Focal and Mr Kite were abeam of White Rock in the Derwent, they were sailing boat-for-boat with Marineline/Focal holding a slender lead in what had become a race of tactics and sail-handling techniques.

Usinfg her new Code O, Mr Kite drew closer and closer and then, with both boats back to sailing under jib and main in the 5-8 knot breeze, Mr Kite managed to point higher as they neared the Garrow Light and sailed over the top of Marineline/Focal.

From there on, owner/skipper Andrew Hunn steered Mr Kite with great skill in the light breeze to steadily open up the lead on Marineline/Focal, crossing the finish off Castray Esplanade finish line almost seven minutes and several hundred metres in front.