Hobart’s River Derwent turned on magnificent sailing today for more than 350 sailors, young and old, sailing in boats that ranged from Optimists to Farr 40s in the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania’s spring regatta, The Showdown.
The Showdown opened with a twilight race for 30 keelboats and sports boats on Friday evening and today they were joined by 120 off-the-beach dinghies, skiffs, sailboards and catamarans.
A freshening seabreeze that began with 7-9 knots in the morning and reached 12-15 knots in the afternoon enabled race officers to run five races for all the off-the-beach classes and three for the Farr 40s and other keelboats, the SB3 sports boats and the International Dragon class.
Highlight of the racing was the close duels between the Farr 40s in Division 1, the spectacular speed of the A-class catamarans and the spirited racing in the junior classes, the International Cadets and Sabots.
The Farr 40s led the fleet around the course in each of the three races today but only one of them came out a race winner of PHS corrected times, Voodoo Chile, helmed by Andrew Hunn, taking out race four. Hunn had a good day on water, beating arch rival Stephen Boyes in Wired around the course in two of the three races, although the margins were close.
Leading Division 1 after four races, last night’s twilight race and today’s three heats, is Ian Stewart’s Mumm 36 Tas Paints which had a first, a fifth and a second today to be on 12 points. Just one point behind on 13 points is Andrew Sutherland’s Silver Mist which followed its twilight race win with 2-1-9 score today. Third overall is Total Locks & Alarms, skippered by Nathan Mills.
Under AMS scoring, overall results are quite different with Don Calvert’s Castro 40 Intrigue winning two of the three races today to be on 6 points, just one point ahead of Whistler (David Rees) which had a win and two second places today.
The rapidly expanding SB3 sportsboat class attracted eight entries for The Showdown, with some spirited racing as the breeze freshened. Brett Cooper, steering Our Toy, followed his Friday evening win with two firsts and a second today, although the first was by just nine seconds from Ciao Baby III (Steve Chau). Racing with the SB3s was the Thompson 8 WA Cromarty Engineering (Steve Harrison) which was the other heat winner today.
Although multiple Prince Philip Cup winner Nick Rogers is unbeaten so far with his International Dragon Karabos IX although the racing today was tight, with Stephen Shield, helming Ridgeway, close astern in all but one race.
Peter Campbell
5 November 2011