Adelaide to Port Lincoln Race handicap winners

by Bob Ross on 19 Feb 2011
Robert Date’s Reichel/Pugh 52 Scarlet Runner from Sandringham Yacht Club, Melbourne, has won the Lexus Adelaide-Port Lincoln race on IRC handicap as well as being first to finish in record time.

Second and third finishers Secret Men’s Business 3.5, Geoff Boettcher’s Reichel/Pugh 51 from the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia and the Farr TP52 Calm, skippered by Jason Van Der Slot from Royal Brighton Yacht Club, also placed second and third respectively on IRC handicap.

SMB3.5 was 17min 14sec behind Scarlet Runner on corrected time with Calm another 17 minutes behind.

Fourth place-getter on corrected time, the 2009 Rolex Sydney-Hobart IRC handicap winner Two True, a Beneteau First 40 owned and skippered by Andrew Saies from the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia, was fourth on corrected time, a lengthy two hours and 25 minutes behind Calm.

Scarlet Runner, Secret Men’s Business 3.5 and Calm were greatly favoured by the wind pattern that had the fleet running hard from the start in 15-20 knot east-northeasterly that held for the leaders all the way from Adelaide to Cape Spencer and freshened to peak at 40 knots along the foot of the Yorke Peninsula.

Scarlet Runner was able to sustain her top speed of 22 knots for five minutes at a time, longer than her rivals. SMB3.5, which achieved speed bursts of up to 25 knots, lost five to seven minutes in a massive round-up that blew out her A3 spinnaker, dunked crewmen caught down to leeward in the water with the boat on her side and damaged her pushpit and a stanchion.

Then the wind moderated, changed to the west-southwest and built again, to 25 knots, to keep the leaders moving fast across Spencer Gulf before dying to 6-10 knots and heading to have the boatss tacking the last few miles up Boston Bay to the finish of the 156n mile course.

Andrew Saies said his well-sailed production 40-footer had no chance of keeping up with the 50-footers in the hard running conditions.

'The big boats got away averaging 15 knots, we reckoned, and at times doing twice our speed. It’s very hard when most of the race is in those conditions for us to get it back on our handicap.

‘We started in about 25 knots of nor’easter, had regular gusts of 30 knots and 27 to 40 for about three hours and we were achieving speeds on this boat that I have not seen before.

'But she was beautifully balanced, we had an A3 asymmetrical(spinnaker) up and no problems at all.'

In other divisions, The Business (Nick George, CYCSA) won the Sydney 38 division and Sculptor, a Farr 11.6 cruiser/racer skippered by Michael Keough won the performance handicap division.

For full results, go to www.plyc.com.au