The Eastsail Invitational Spinnaker Series

by Sail-World & Tony Pickering on 7 Mar 2003 An impromptu meeting in the CYCA bar after the last CYCA Monday night spinnaker race, triggered an end of season challenge between Sextant and Love Byte.

Peter Goldsworthy from Sextant and Tony Pickering from Love Byte were discussing that it was a shame that the twilight spinnaker series had finished and it was another 9-10 weeks until the CYCA Winter Series.

Tony said that they had a new crew made up primarily of former Eastsail students and they were looking around for some way to continue training
under spinnaker. Peter and Tony, therefore challenged each other to some adhoc additional races.

The stage was set and the date of 10th March was decided for the challenge. However word soon got out of the challenge and it reached Occasional Coarse Language (Warwick Sherman) and Champagne on Ice (Phil and Nada Dickinson) that an end of season finale was in the offing. The two boat challenge became four. Pretty soon Farr Horizons (Ivan Reshnekhov), Akela (Steve Sweeny) and Savior-faire (Malcolm Roe) had added their boats to the
list. The challenge then became 3 weeks long and extended to cover the 10th, 17th and 24th March.

At this point Tony mentioned to the CYCA that there was interest in having a longer spinnaker series next year. Justine Kirkjian put this to the
Sailing Committee who have agreed to extend the CYCA Monday night spinnaker season next year.

Tony then mentioned to Eastsail that they were in need of support to run the races as more than two boats entered would need a starting line and
offical. Eastsail (Deb McCawley) immediately stepped up with the offer to start the spinnaker boats 5 minutes after they had completed starting their student race. OCL crew member, and Eastsail start boat and race co-ordinator is Gary Manuel.

In addition Eastsail have also offered a bottle of their Eastsail/Yarranabbe vintage for each of the winners of the three races. The Eastsail Invitational Spinnaker Series was born and at the last count there are now 11 boats entered.

The entrants and handicaps are noted below. The winner of each race will have 90 seconds cut from their handicap, the second place 60 seconds and
the third place 30 seconds. Likewise the back of the fleet will gain 90, 60 and 30 seconds to their handicap.

Tony says he was quite surprised at the level of interest shown in the event. He mentioned that OCL are going to use it as a tune up for the Sydney to Mooloolaba offshore race early in April.

Imagination (Robin Hawthorn) are using the series as training for a Beneteau regatta. Love Byte
and Sextant still have the challenge of a jug of rum and coke on the corrected time winner for each race and Tony says he has set a very generous
handicap for Sextant that is 3 minutes less than the handicap they finished the CYCA Spinnaker Series...'to make things interesting, that and I reckon my crew are still improving'. Let the challenge begin...

Initial Handicaps:

Sail # Yacht Handicap

8008 Occasional Coarse Language 29.5 minutes

7744 Savior-faire 29.5 minutes

6175 Love Byte 28.0 minutes

6073 Swish 28.0 minutes

7777 Bashful 28.0 minutes

5984 Champagne on Ice 28.0 minutes

A35 Imagination 28.0 minutes

9412 Sextant 27.0 minutes

4190 Farr Horizons 25.0 minutes

4970 Akela 25.0 minutes

544 Out of Sight 22.0 minutes