Australian Three Peaks Race - Peccadillo dashes away on day two
by Peter Campbell on 23 Apr 2011
Peccadillo as she raced across Bass Strait yesterday afternoon. - Australian Three Peaks Race Paul Scrambler
Australian Three Peaks Race - The powerful Victorian catamaran Peccadillo, skippered by Charles Meredith, this morning has broken away from the fleet as she heads towards the Tasmanian east coast on the second leg of the Australian Three Peaks Race.
Peccadillo set sail from Lady Barron on the long second sea leg to Coles Bay shortly before 0600 this morning after a fast run across the paddocks of Flinders Island to the granite outcrop of Mount Strzelecki and return by team runners Richard Bowles and Chris Wright, both from Melbourne.
Their time was 7 hours 16 minutes, but this was bettered by Team Slingshot’s runners, Clarke McClymont and Matt Cooper, who covered the 65 km in under seven hours.
This enabled Team Slingshot, a five times line honours winner of the Three Peaks Race, but now skippered by Jean-Pierre Ravanat of Hobart, to get away from Lady Barron in second place at 07:22, followed by Haphazard (Bruce Edmunds) and VisitFlindersIsland.com (Steve Laird).
Shortly after 09:00, Peccadillo was 22 nautical miles ENE of Swan Island, with 228 nautical miles to the finish of the four-day endurance combination of ocean racing and mountain running. The second stopover is at Coles Bay on the east coast and the finish at Hobart, with a climb to the peak of Mount Wellington and back.
Team Slingshot, also racing in the multihull division, was second in fleet, 19 nautical miles south-east of Lady Barron Flinders Island, followed by Haphazard, with skipper Bruce Edmunds sailing his 23rd successive Three Peaks Race.
Close astern of Haphazard was the second monohull, AdvantEdge, skippered by Andrew Jones, both yachts from the Port Dalrymple Yacht Club.
At that stage Cradle Mountain Chateau and Don’t Panic had yet to sail from Lady Barron.
Whistler, skippered by Hobart yachtsman David Rees, was still south-west of Lady Barron after losing steering in Bass Strait after yesterday’s race start from Beauty Point.
The Tasmanian Police boat van Diemen left Lady Barron at 06:00 to take the yacht in tow when she reaches Franklin
Australian Three Peaks Race
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