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2012
Black Jack first Queensland yacht home in Audi Sydney Gold Coast Race

Black Jack first Queensland yacht home in Audi Sydney Gold Coast Race

NEWS
29 Jul, 2012 04:58:00 PM

Black Jack first Queensland yacht home in Audi Sydney Gold Coast Race

Queensland sailor Mark Bradford steered the RP66, Black Jack, to a second on line in the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s Audi Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race this afternoon and also finished inside Brindabella’s record time.

Like Wild Oats XI, Black Jack is a canting keeler, so will have the second fastest time ever recorded in the Open record for this race. She finished in the time of 26hrs 24mins 2 sec, finishing second to Wild Oats XI, to claim the title of first Queensland boat home.

Bradford, skippers the boat for Peter Harburg, who named the yacht for his car racing legend friend, Jack Brabham. Bradford and Harburg, a bit of a car enthusiast himself, put together a solid crew that included Bradford’s winning Etchells crew mate, Vaughan Prentice and former America’s Cup sailor Pete Dowdney.

The Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron boat ended her race off Main Beach in Southport just over four hours behind Bob Oatley’s 100ft winner.

Like everyone else, Bradford said the race was ‘Very windy. We got through in good shape though. We didn’t get off the start very cleanly. We recovered quickly and got ahead of Loki, but they held on,” he said.

“When I woke up this morning we were 11 miles ahead of them, but the wind got really light and we’d opted to leave our light air sails behind, thinking the wind would stay in for us,” Bradford said. “Loki had a good run; they did really well.

“We’re very happy to get here inside record time – that damn 100 footer got us again,” Bradford said, tongue in cheek, referring to Wild Oats XI. “We should have stayed inshore more. We hit something late last night; I don’t know what, but we hit hard. We won’t know what the damage is till we have a chance to look under the boat.

“Peter (Harburg) is geared up more for line honours than overall, so he’s happy,” Bradford finished.

Follow the race action on http://goldcoast.cyca.com.au or on Twitter http://twitter.com/asgcyr