30 November 2010

Fresh breeze, strong fleets and new winners

By Peter Campbell  

Strong division fleets produced keen competition and four new winners for the season in last Saturday’s Squadron summer racing on Sydney Harbour,  although the one-design fleets were down on numbers.

Winds of up to 20 knots provided some spectacular downwind spinnaker races, including the occasional broach on the shy reaches.

Challenging conditions - Photo: Bruce Kerridge

In Division 1, Tony Coleman’s Euphoria scored her first win of the season, but by only 18 seconds from Brian Bergin’s Ellipse, third place going to Ian MacDiarmid’s Hell Razor.  Under IRC ratings, first place went to Jackie Clare (Geoff & Debbie Davidson), the fourth IRC win of the season for this boat.

A new winner in Division 2 was Andrew Parkes’ Danish Connection, again a close result on corrected time.  The winning margin was 30 seconds from Freya (A King/H Ranck/T Carroll/W Hutchinson),  third place going to Arcturus II (Peter Davenport).

John Jeremy, who is working hard towards next January’s historic 175th Australia Day Regatta, scored his first win of the season with Tingari in Division 3. Yet again, the corrected time margin was close, Tingari beating Senta (Terry & Julie Clarke) by mere 9 seconds.  Third place went to Norn (Robert Albert).

In Division 4,  the Folkboat Dreamtime (Lyndsay Brown & Jim Littlefield) enjoyed the strong breeze to score her third win of the season, winning comfortably from Manhatten Transfer (Ian Lacey) and Alicia (Andrew McPherson).

Another new winner for the season was Sir James and David Hardy’s International Etchells Foolhardy, outsailing the fleet to win from Alchemist (Richard Hammond and Roger Gain) and Humpback (Stephen Barlow & Peter Gardner.

Former Olympic sailor Carl Ryves was back into first place in the International Dragon class, steering Sidewinder to victory from Liquidity (Richard Franklin & Damien Hannes) with the veteran Gordon Ingate taking third place in Whim.

Only four boats turned out for the International Yngling class, with Miss Pibb (Hamish Jarrett) taking the scratch honours.

From Peter Campbell

M: 0419 385 028  E: peter_campbell@bigpond.com