Australian Sportsboat Championships Day 2 - Edmunds holds lead

by Peter Campbell on 7 Apr 2012 Australian Sportsboat Championships are currently underway on Hobart’s River Derwent. Despite strong performances by Queensland yachts, Tasmanian Sam Edmunds holds a slender points lead.

Following a win in Saturday’s passage race with his brand new boat Likety-Split, Edmunds, from the Port Dalrymple Yacht Club at Beauty Point, notched up two seconds and a fourth in today’s windward/leeward races.

Re-assured that his father Nick Edmunds and brother Ross had not been injured when Nick’s yacht Haphazard ran aground on Flinders Island early today in the Three Peaks Race, Sam Edmunds sailed consistently well.

'I heard about them going aground just before we went out to race today,' Sam said after yesterday’s racing. 'My mind was not really on the job for a while.'

Three six nautical mile windward/leeward races were sailed today in winds from the western quadrant that varied in direction throughout the afternoon from north-west to south-west and in strength from gusts to 25 knots to as little as five knots.

After four races, Likety-Split, a Shaw 650, is on nine points, just one ahead of defending Australian Sportsboat Champion Blokes World, an Egan 7.27 skippered by Queenslander Brett Whitbread.

After a sixth place in Friday’s passage race, Blokes World led the sportsboat fleet around the course in all three races yesterday, winning two on SMS (Sportsboat Measurement System) and finished second in the third.

A close third overall is another Queensland boat, Kaito, a Melges 24 skipper3ed by Heath Townsend, which won the third race yesterday to be on 10 points.

Kettering Yacht Club entrants Priscilla (John Dryden) and Femme Fatale (John Penman) head Division 2, with just two points separating them.

In Division 4 for trailable yachts, Wynyard Yacht Club’s More Mischief (Mike Darby) has had two wins and two seconds to be on six points, comfortably clear of Tamar Yacht Club entry Kari (Richard Grant) on 11 points, and Pure Steel (John McMahon) also from Wynyard, on 12 points.