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Quest for handicap trophies unfolding

Home 2006 Quest for handicap trophies unfolding

Steven David's Wild Joe is amongst early entries for the inaugural Sydney Mackay Yacht Race

With the line honours winner of the Sydney Gold Coast Race all but decided, barring mishap, the all important quest for handicap trophies is unfolding further back with Steven David’s canting keel Reichel/Pugh 60 Wild Joe the provisional IRC handicap leader at this morning’s 0705 hrs AEST position report.

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With the line honours winner of the Sydney Gold Coast Race all but decided, barring mishap, the all important quest for handicap trophies is unfolding further back with Steven David’s canting keel Reichel/Pugh 60 Wild Joe the provisional IRC handicap leader at this morning’s 0705 hrs AEST position report.

Showing the fluidity of the tussle for top handicap honours Wild Joe was first on the leaderboard ahead of Bill Wild’s Queensland entry Wedgetail, which had been leading the IRC fleet just an hour earlier. Wedgetail is also the best placed Queensland boat on line honours from a fleet of 38 contesting the 384 nautical mile passage.

In the PHS standings at this morning’s radio sked, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia Commodore Geoff Lavis’ Inglis 50 UBS Wild Thing was leading David Benson’s Queensland boat Prime Example with Immediate Past CYCA Commodore Martin James in third with his Farr 65 Infinity III, despite having lost time with a torn mainsail and headsail problems.

While they are competing in different handicap divisions, this means little to two of the healthy fleet of five Queensland entries, Prime Example and Kevin Miller’s Quest of Queensland, which are neck and neck and have a “bet on every headland”.

Kevin Miller’s Nelson/Marek 46 is the former Quest, the overall winner of the 2002 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race and handicap winner of this race two years ago.

This race is the first time the new owner has had the sails up, the boat having undergone a major refit and the mast only stepped on Wednesday, just three days out from the race start yesterday afternoon on Sydney Harbour.

“It was a beautiful but freezing night with a 35 knot sou’wester for most of the night,” said Miller this morning as they were passing Smokey Cape south of Port Macquarie broad reaching at 9 knots of boat speed along the deserted beaches of the mid NSW coast.

Apart from a broken kicker, their first night at sea was incident free, despite the heavy running conditions which have knocked four out of the race. “It’s a very solid boat,” Miler added.

Ray Roberts’ DK 46 Quantum Racing didn’t experience much over 12 knots during the night but just after 9.00am this morning their skipper/tactician Steve McConaghy reported the breeze had built back up to 20 knots from the sou’west.

“We had some pretty hairy moments going inside Seal Rocks last night to get out of the tide but we are now beating some pretty big boats,” said McConaghy morning as he was polishing off his scrambled eggs.

After starting 15 minutes late yesterday due to a broken main batten, Quantum Racing had made up significant ground by the first position report and they are now hoping to peg back Michael Hiatt’s canting keel Cookson 50 Living Doll, and maybe even catch Wedgetail.

The latest report from the line honours leader Skandia at 8.36am AEST had them 93 miles from the finish off Main Beach and at their current average speed of 9 knots, that’s another 10 hours of racing. This will put them across the finish line at around 6.30pm tonight, well outside of race record contention.

“We are changing back and forth between chutes to keep the speed on. Plenty of packing of chutes and the northern Europeans on board are starting to feel the heat!” said Will Oxley, the navigator on the 30 metre Melbourne maxi in his latest email from the boat.

For Martin Hill, the skipper of the Sydney 38 Estate Master, they are hoping to carry the stronger sou’wester as far north as possible before the forecast sou’easter slows the mid fleet’s stride.

Their tactics overnight were to go wide and this allowed them to carry a spinnaker for most of the night, a calculated move which “paid off for us,” said a delighted Hill this morning.