Battle for the Bar
by John Curnow, Sail-World.com AUS Editor 24 Feb 2025 13:00 PST
Giddy Up! © Capel Sound Invitational
By their own admission, this is the unofficial name for the Capel Sound Invitational. Yes, it pays reference to the location where they serve drinks, but it is also for the stretch of water it is named after. It is a patch of water with a long sand bar along Victoria's glorious Mornington Peninsula in what was once known as Rosebud West, and incorporates part of Tootgarook as well. It lies between McCrae and Blairgowrie, with some of the most gloriously coloured water going around, globally.
Watch the video to see what we mean, should the pics not have done it for you already...
Now it could have also been called the Capel Sound Freebie, as there is no entry fee. Anyway, when anything from Sou'west to Sou'east blows it will be cool, for sure, but flat water makes for a reaching paradise. Parts of it are just 1.5m deep, some at 3m, and further out up to 5m, so it pays to know where you are, and definitely not inside the 5-knot zone, either.
The event is custom made for the 49er Old Boys League I wrote about ages ago. You know, get off the beach OK, might make the weather mark intact, but there'll be tears soon after that. Instead, lay just the old wing mark, blast out there, one gybe, and back to the finish line. The benefits are you get a second start for the ultimate in a Steven Bradbury manoeuvre, you know where to place the medics, and the media crew, then back ashore to tell everyone how good you were.
With the Capel Sound Invitational, Scott Paton has gone further, and higher. Well done. It is hosted as a collaboration between Rye Yacht Club and Rosebud Yacht Club, with the annual celebrations afterwards conducted alternately at each one. The event has come a long way from the first discussion between Scott (from Rye) and Ross Purcell, the Commodore of Rosebud Yacht Club.
It is a one-day, one-event regatta, with a four-day window to get the weather right. One dash, and you are done. A lot of tide in that part of the world too, so in conjunction with wind direction, the flatter the water, the better, with due South the optimum. Usually, there are few puffs involved in it, too. Game on.
Now it happens just after the Hobart gets away, which is important for one fact alone. If you start at Rye you finish at Rye, and if you start at Rosebud, you finish at Rosebud. Who'd want to be on the road with a trailer in that part of the world at time of year? Paton said, "We're trying to simplify the whole process of going to a regatta for people and make it easy. Said volume of people does add to the carnival atmosphere, and so many people ride along watching their crew out on the water. Of course, there is an actual carnival at Rye at that time of year, so it is all just adding to it."
On land there are some six kilometres between the two clubs, and they have a gate midway, called Midway BTW, that you have to pass through, which keeps the fleet more together. The Juniors turn here and return to home port to rack up their six kays. Other classes have to make up to three full laps - e.g. two for cats, three for foilers. This stems from the fact that the Capel Sound Invitational is open to Boards, OTB and foilers, monos and multis, then sportsboats to trailersailers, even shallower draft keelboats, and attracts everything from legends of the sport to recent graduates from learn to sail.
You want to have fun? They can accommodate you. "I think it's really good for the fleet to have such a broad spectrum of craft on the same course at the same time. I think there's a lot of benefits that we can take away from that. I'm open to anyone that wants to sail the course. At this juncture, remember you are talking about a FREE event, so why not be in it? If you are a bit deeper draft, we'll just make a special course for you a bit further out."
The premise of the whole thing is to get people out on the water. "Whatever is the standard procedure at yacht clubs at the moment, I'm really trying to do the opposite. I would like to try and keep the event free for as long as I possibly can. How we go about that and how that looks in the future, I'm unsure. I will definitely work hard to keep it free. We're the only event that is."
Three years in, with the last one only at the very end of December 2024, and success is in increasing numbers. "So, you sit down at Boxing Day and watch the Hobart, get excited about sailing, turn to your club, and there's generally a bit of a vacuum around that time of year. There are some Australian championships going on then, for sure, but for those that just want to stay and sail and have fun while they're on holidays, there was just not much going on at that point. All I wanted to do was to create an event at that time that just was a lot of fun."
It is both simple enough for somebody straight out of a learn to sail programme who wants to experience an array of craft all out on the water at the same time, and also technical enough for a good sailor who wants to send it. Paton will be looking to take young sailors out for a blast on his Tornado next year, and this experiential scenario could end up with their own division in the coming years, as it is all about people out on the water.
Now in year one they had 20 boats. Year two doubled to 42, and year three saw over 80 craft take to Capel Sound. There were 120 EOIs for 2024, but an adverse weather forecast nipped the top off that, with the back half of the race providing the best of it after a fickle start. Still, you do not have to be a mathematician to work the trend out. People want this.
Sailing is close to Paton's heart, and it is the reason he does what he does. He sailed as a youngster in Minnow's, a Sabre, then Paper Tiger, and A-Class as well as the Tornado for a bit in Sydney, but became, "...a bit disenfranchised with the sport at 18 to 20 years of age. I was a little bit bored looking for something else. I moved into snowboarding, fell in love with the mountain sport and mountain culture and the way they run things up there. I started a family, and got back into kiteboarding, as it was easy to carry the gear and still had a passion for wind sports. Then as my kids grew older, and recognising the importance of sailing and wind sports to making good citizens of life, I knew I had to get them involved."
"It was born out of my own experience, where I'd seen the kids who I sailed with at school, and they all went on to make a good fist of it - stable jobs, stable marriages, stable and loving family lives. Whereas the kids who didn't sail whilst they were at school ended up being dropouts. There are many that haven't done well, nor survived."
"I believe that sailing is the reason, because sailing is about dealing with adversity. You are problem solving. I call it sea grass roots, and as we know, sailing is a sport for life. Sailing creates free thinking, problem solving, physically capable kids that turn into worthwhile adults. We've got to get more kids on the water, and we do need to change what we're doing, because currently what we're doing is not hitting the mark, in my opinion. So, if we are going to create change we need to deliver that ourselves. This is the essence of the Capel Sound Invitational."
"We had 12-year-olds out on O'pen Bics, all the way up to an 85-year-old on a Hobie 16 for this last event. We had some doing 5 knots, and others doing 35 knots. One person said after Pip Hare arrived under jury rig that she was pointing higher than a Hobie 16 can, so camaraderie is very much a true part of what we get up to."
"At that time of year, you have the Couta Boats from Sorrento, the Petersville Cup at Blairgowrie, there were the Hobie Cat Nationals at McCrae, and then us in the middle. What a spectacle. It's very conducive to getting people to think, 'I'll have a crack at that.' Sails on the water creates interest in the sport, and if we're not getting sails on the water, we're going backwards."
You have to thank Paton for making it so. Also, Pat Langley and our great friends at Vaikobi who stepped up with prizes, as too Ronstan, the Australian Windsurfer Association, Dave Eichmeyer from Quantum Sails, along with the wonderful owners of the Independent Wine Store, right opposite the Rye Yacht Club on the main drag (Nepean Highway).
"Hopefully we have shown a way for everyone to work together to get the job done, not fight over the same pool of people. It is a great feeling that we have with Rye, Rosebud and McCrae YCs. Others should be having the same experiences. Yes, have your specialities, like Rye's is Juniors, and McCrae is performance, but there is room for all to get their hands on the tiller here."
"An event like this can happen in any State or country, as long as we are not siloed away from each other, working independently. We should be all working together to help grow the sport. I think that's actually really, really important." Q.E.D Scott.
Please enjoy your yachting, stay safe, and thanks for tuning into Sail-World.com
John Curnow
Sail-World.com AUS Editor