On The Water

Twilight Race: As the boats left the marina for last Wednesday’s weekly twilight race, they were greeted by a 15 knot north easterly breeze, which subsequently dropped to 10 knots by the time the race commenced.

A total of 22 boats and 124 crew faced the start boat for a few laps of the 1.5 nautical mile course.

Division Two saw seven boats in their fleet, with Reignition (Charles Wallis) leading, but the conditions ideally suited Smooth Criminal (Leo Rodriguez) as they powered to the front of the fleet by the time they reached the first rounding mark.  

Bobby’s Girl (Mark Beale) worked their way into second place with Reignition relegated to third on line honours.  

Further back, QMS Ponyo (John Galloway) had an off day, while a close battle loomed between Treasure VIII (Rob Davis) and Wide Load (Shannan Hart).  Twister (Kevin Fogarty) also struggled in the light conditions.  On corrected time, Smooth Criminal took the win from Reignition and Bobby’s Girl.

In Division Three, Wobbly Boot (Craig Piccinelli) took the Doyle Sails sponsored best start prize, but were soon overtaken by Alabaster (Kate Warren), leading to a three-way battle at the front as Matchless (Terry Stevens) joined the action.  The light conditions suited Lighthorse (Dianne Forster) and Rossgo (Greg Hammon), while Manteca (Frank Tennison) matched the pace of Lighthorse, crossing the finishing line just two seconds ahead to take the corrected time win, with Alabaster second and Manteca third.

The multihull fleet of four boats saw Angus (Michel Van Der Zwaard) lead from start to finish with Malice (Graham Matthews) a distant second, while G’nome (Terry Archer) crossed the finishing line 23 seconds ahead, but 1 lap short of the leaders while Kay Cee (Will Richards), sailing solo, made up the balance of the fleet.  Angus took the corrected time win from Malice and G’nome.

Lady Skippers Race: Last weekend saw a fleet of six boats competing in the Whitsunday Sailing Club lady skippers’ series, condensed to two races on Sunday.  The fleet consisted of a mixture of boats from Overdrive, a 10.7 metre trimaran through to Norbert G, a 6.3 metre trailable yacht. Eligibility required a female helm on each boat as the person in charge.

Race One saw Smooth Criminal (Donnah Jordan) leading the fleet from Overdrive (Darlene King) and Alabaster (Kate Warren).  Further back, Kay Cee (Anne Miller) led Lighthorse (Kerry Aspland) and Norbert G (Karen Evans).  On corrected time, Lighthorse took the honours from Norbert G and Overdrive.

Race Two saw the boats finishing in the same order, however corrected time results were quite different.  This time Alabaster took the win from Norbert G and Overdrive.  

Overall results saw Norbert G (four poits) take the win from Alabaster (six), on a countback from Lighthorse (six) and Overdrive (six), Smooth Criminal (eight), and Kay Cee (12).

Contributed with thanks to Ross Chisholm
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Side by Side with Lighthorse and Manteca