Hello sunshine, my old friend

by John Curnow on 5 Feb 2012 Seems like a lot of places North of the divide have not seen much of you lately. Indeed our hearts go out to all the people in some of the Northern reaches of our country, who have seen nothing but water for a very long time. Down South, however, it has been gleaming of late, on the whole, and Round Four of the 2011/12 Club Marine Series on Melbourne’s Port Phillip, held on Saturday, February 4 certainly had plenty of gold on display.

Greg Sinclair was the Principal Race Officer on the day and he said, 'We tried! Very happy to get Division Zero (the largest and all race oriented vessels) a result for their first race today. We set the course (number five or two laps) at 340 degrees for 1.8 nautical miles and that was shortened in the end to just the three legs, with each of those requiring a change of course, just to keep it all very interesting.

We spent time looking for a breeze and even tried to go into a start sequence for Division Zero’s second race, but the Answering Pennant seemed to be the fairest option.

Abandonment was not too long after that. It certainly was a very hard day - many thanks to all of the race management team for a great effort.'

Bruce Humphries was the Race Officer for the Division Two and Three course, which was just to North of the other, roughly adjacent to Brighton and Elwood. They saw breeze for a little bit longer during the course of the afternoon. 'What a hard day at the office! Such a shame we didn’t get to shorten and then ultimately abandoning just seemed to be the fairer option, after the breeze dropped away completely, towards the end of the race, when most of the leaders were still at the bottom mark.'

Jason Van Der Slot of Division Zero vessel, Calm, who were the only boat to get a win today, said, 'We had under five knots of breeze and it was all over the place, with the lead changing the whole time. Finally, we prevailed, which was just great! We had a good start and rounded the top mark around two minutes in front.

Terra Firma (fixed keel Cookson 50) did the best of the boats coming down on a new breeze and rounded the bottom mark in first place. Once we rounded, we chose the right side for the work back up to the finish line. Swimming and then drinking after returning to the clubhouse seemed to be the order for a day such as this', Jason finished with.

In the end, Calm got up for IRC (International Rule, Club) honours ahead of Scarlet Runner and Veloce. After rounding first, Terra Firma lost six places on the final work, which was surely very disappointing for all on board. In terms of the series, Scarlet Runner leads IRC from Veloce and Cadibarra 8, but only the one point separates each position from the next.

Rush leads both the Australian Measurement System and the performance handicap categories over Scarlet Runner in both, with Cadibarra 8 third in AMS and Veloce third in PHS. With no racing completed in the other divisions, results stand as per Round Three.

Division Zero needs 10 races completed before they can allow a drop and Divisions One, Two and Three have a series at three races and must complete six before a drop comes in to calculations. There are three rounds left for a maximum of six races for Div Zero and three for the remainder, which if completed will allow the latter their drop.

So hello Sunshine, thanks for making a very welcome appearance, but could you please consider bringing our other pal, Hughie the God of Wind out with you also for the fifth round of the Club Marine Series. Sandringham Yacht Club will host this round on February 18, 2012.

Many thanks to the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria for providing the media vessel, thereby enabling the team to get out on the water and capture the day for us. The Club Marine Series is proudly sponsored by Australia’s largest marine insurer. Details and full results to date for the series can be found here.