Australia's Outteridge looks the goods for SB3 Worlds

by Sail Port Stephens media on 17 Apr 2011 Going into the final day of the SB3 Nationals, being sailed as part of Sail Port Stephens 2011, dual 49er World Champion, Moth World Champion and Olympic sailor Nathan Outteridge led the fleet by two points.

Glenn Bourke, triple Laser World champion and former British and European SB3 champion, was second.

Spectators and competitors alike were treated to a ‘master class’ from Outteridge today as the SB3’s finished their National Championship on Salamander Bay, Port Stephens.

Outteridge (One Design Sailing) won the first race by 25 seconds, from Glenn Bourke (Club Marine White) and Phillip Gray (Dulon Polish).

In the second race of the day the familiar pattern continued. Outteridge was first to the top mark and behind him Glenn Bourke was deep (well for him any way) in fourth. But going down the run the superior technique that he and Outteridge both possess had Bourke quickly up in second place. However once again Bourke could not match Outteridge’s speed advantage.

Outteridge just kept extending and took race 8 of the series by fifty two seconds ahead of Bourke. Phillip Gray finished 31 seconds behind Bourke.

Race 9 produced an even greater winning margin for the unstoppable Nathan Outteridge and crew. They finished nearly two minutes ahead of Bourke, with Mark Prince (Dart Vader) claiming third.

Congratulations to Nathan Outteridge and crew, Ian Brown and Beau Outteridge, who are the new SB3 National Champions after producing a near faultless display of sailing over the three days.

On shore Nathan commented ‘We got lucky quite a few times. With these boats, if you get round the top mark in a puff and get up on the plane then the guys behind can miss the puff and you clear right out. That happened to us twice today.

‘Sailing against ‘Bourkey’ it was much closer than the results show. He has been in the class a long time and he has great technique. He was pushing us all the time.

‘We spent a lot of time on rig tuning and I think we have our settings pretty much right. The biggest issue we have is that we have only sailed in flat water so we will have quite some work to do at Torbay before the Worlds and in limited time to get our settings and technique right for offshore swells.

‘But we are really looking forward to the challenge.

‘My younger brother Beau, who sailed with us for the first time in the Nationals sailed really well, he kept out of trouble and he told me on the way in that if Tom (Slingsby) had a problem he would be quite happy to take his slot at the Worlds.’

Glenn Bourke, Rod Jones and Greg McAllansmith finished in second place, sailing extremely well, their lowest placing being a third in race 5.

Completing the podium was Mark Wolfenden (Still Out Of Control).

It is clear that when Laser Olympic champion, Etchells World Champion and current ISAF Sailor of the Year Tom Slingsby joins Nathan Outteridge and Sydney 2000 Australian Olympic head coach Ian Brown at the SB3 Worlds in Torbay, UK next month they will be a formidable team.

Results are provisional and subject to protest.