Manly 16ft Skiff Sailing Club Championship Heat 6
by Adam Lucius 9 Dec 23:40 PST
6 December 2025
The Manly 16ft club championship title race is increasingly becoming a race in two, despite IMEI Barnabas Build breaking the dominance of the top three boats with a late win in heat six on Saturday.
The Joel Beashel-skippered boat looked set for a runner-up place before race and series leader Buckingham Marine Services (Daniel Turner) cartwheeled with the finish line in sight in the hot and gusty (20-knot) conditions.
That enabled IMEI BB to sneak past and claim the first win by a boat outside the big three - BMS, Red Pumps Red (Zoe Dransfield) and Geochemical Assessment (Nathan McNamara) - this season.
Those three boats had won the first five races between them, with RPR saluting three times and Turner and McNamara sharing a win apiece.
But fresh off claiming the NSW 16ft Championship - and a month out from defending their national crown - Beashel, Trent Barnabas and Rob Napper sailed a near faultless race to continue their impressive build-up to next month's national championships at Belmont.
Imagine Signage (Nathan Wilmot) was a couple of minutes behind in second, with BMS - who had crewman Matt Stenta jump off the maxi Scallywag that morning following the Cabbage Tree Island race - settling for third.
IMEI also took out handicap honours.
"We got a bit lucky with 'Ruffy' (Turner) stacking on the last run," Barnabas admitted.
"He was a bit quicker than us on the downwind and we were getting to him upwind, so we were within 10-15 seconds of him all day and just got that break at the end."
The win broke a run of uncharacteristically poor club championship results that has left IMEI BB in sixth spot overall and with little hope of salvaging the campaign.
BMS (15 points) and RPR (17pts) have cleared out from the rest of the fleet with three heats to go and will likely slug it out right to the final race.
Barnabas said: "We had a couple of shockers early and have been playing catch up ever since." "Ruffy and Zoe are sailing really well and are definitely the ones to beat. I can't see anyone else really challenging from here."
The focus for Beashel, Barnabas and Napper over the next three weeks will be fine-tuning for the Australian 16ft Championships at Belmont (January 3-10). As the defending champs, they know the hunter will become the hunted.
In the 13s, Harken (Heidi Bates/Orlando Sandlik) racked up its fifth straight win to take a near unassailable lead on the club championship table.
Buckingham Marine (Ash Napper/Theo Franklin) finished second to join a three-way shootout with IMEI (Charlie Snell/Ollie Ross) and Buck & Simple (Lachie Jensen/Max Barrett) for runner-up honours behind Harken. The Kitchen Maker (Tayla Lees/Ollie Barrett) were the day's big improver, crossing the line third to move into seventh overall.
In other sailing news, juniors president Tim Lees is nursing a broken foot after a mishap on Buck & Simple at last week's state 16ft championships.
And the Australian Sailing Team Skiff is celebrating its best result of the season, finishing 13th with Daniel Links, Keizo Tomoshima (49er class) and Ellis Merrett (470 class).
Quick Links: