Second Wind

Great breezes and a relaxed atmosphere at the rebranded Airlie Beach Race Week, by Vanessa Dudley, words and pictures.

HERE was a smaller fleet and less "high profile" big boats at this year's 17th annual regatta at Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays, the first not to carry the Hog's Breath Cafe logo of event founder Don Algie. Racing was nevertheless keen in all divisions across the 90-boat fleet, which included Algie's own handsome Warwick 66 Storm 2, and the sailing conditions could hardly have been better, with fresh breezes, mostly flat water, tropical island scenery and strong winter sunlight.

A large, very slow-moving high-pressure system situated near Melbourne at the start of the regatta extended a firm ridge northwards along the Queensland coast, generating moderate to fresh south-east Tradewinds.

Regatta management led by Denis Thomson of Sydney with Tony Denham as principal race officer, supported by Ross and Kevin Wilson from Melbourne and a willing team of volunteers from the host Whitsunday Sailing Club, put on a mix of courses including windward/leewards in Pioneer Bay and longer circuits around the surrounding island clusters.

Although numbers were down in the IRC racing division, there was a particularly fierce tussle for the trophy between Ray Robert's DK46 Quantum Racing from Sydney and Michael Hiatt's Cookson 50, Living Doll from Melbourne. Immediately before Airle Beach Race Week both boats had scored significant offshore victories, with Living Doll winning the 900nm Sydney to Mackay race while Quantum Racing won the 470nm Sydney to Mooloolaba race concurrent with the Mackay event.

 Living Doll went into the final day's racing equal on points with Roberts' DK46, but was unable to hold her time over the primarily windward/leeward course. It had been a different story earlier in the week when the passage races' reaching legs favoured Living Doll and her sistership Pussy Galore, a new Auckland Cookson 50 owned and skippered by Anatole Masfen.

Quantum Racing's Ray Roberts was only able to race the first three days of the series due to business commitments and left the boat in the capable hands of his tactician Steve McConaghy, with Jamie Wilmot taking over the helm. The production 46-footer built by DK Yachts in Malaysia raced with a crew of up to 16, including Ron McMullen on mainsheet, Gerard Smith on the bow and Julie Hodder navigating.

McConaghy said, "We prefer not reaching; in anything other than the windward/leewards the Cookson 50s go away from us." In the decisive final race, which began with one large triangle followed by a long beat, square run and final beat in 10-20kts, he said, "We were nervous after the second reach, because we thought Living Doll had one minute 40 on us on time, but then we had a really good beat and got to the top in front of them on time by a minute. They went left, we went right, and there were a couple of big shifts from 108 degrees as far as 125 degrees, the biggest shift of the day. Then on the run there was good pressure for us."

Winning the race and the series was the latest in a succession of IRC victories for McConaghy in partnership with Ray Roberts, including the Scotchman's Hill Series at this year's Skandia Geelong Week. Since last summer they have also been racing the Farr 40 Quantum Racing to further hone their tactical racing skills in one design competition.

Living Doll meanwhile has been undergoing a steady program of optimisation and sported a new rig with a carbon fibre mast and PBO rigging, which Michael Hiatt said weighed some 40kgs less than his boat's previous carbon rig, and a mainsail weighing 30kgs less than the previous one. The yacht also had a new fin keel drawing 250mm more than the previous one, carrying the original lead bulb.

Although the keel is capable of canting 35 degrees to either side via hydraulic controls, Hiatt decided to race north to Mackay and at Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island this year with the keel centred, to obtain a lower rating under the IRC handicapping system (1.286 compared to her 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart race TCC of 1.3).

This gave her roughly two minutes 12 seconds per hour rating advantage over Pussy Galore, sailing with her keel canting and a TCC of 1.321.

Living Doll raced with a crew of 14 to 16 people. Hiatt did most of the steering while New Zealander Tom Faire and local Whitsundays sailor Aaron Linton looked after the tactics. Living Doll's local knowledge also included maxi charter yacht skipper David Haines, who was able to assist in navigating very close to the shore to find some tide relief when required. Peter Fletcher from Hobart looked after the bow.

The Cookson 50 concept of a "user friendly" canting-keeler from Farr Yacht Design with racing performance combined with a spacious comfortable interior has proven highly successful for Auckland yacht builder Mick Cookson, who has produced eight of the 50s so far. Differences between the rigs, underwater configurations and interiors reflect the different owners' requirements: Pussy Galore has been set up with 30mm more freeboard and 70mm lower floorboards than Living Doll to provide more headroom for her exceptionally tall owner.

Brierty's back

 Third in the IRC Racing division was Alan Brierty's Limit, a new Sydney 38 for the Western Australian skipper who was a highly competitive offshore yacht owner a decade ago and made a return last year by chartering a Sydney 38 for the Sydney Gold Coast race. His mostly WA crew included Etchells skipper Mark Lovelady on the helm and Andrew Harry calling tactics.

Quest of Queensland, the Nelson/Marek 46 now Brisbane-based for new owner Kevin Miller, finished fourth overall. Her crew included Sydney yachtsman Roger Hickman as tactician.

Across the divisions

In the PHS Racing class, the consistent Debler Magic, an Airlie Beach Race Week regular sailed by locals Greg Tobin and Charlie Preen, won the series from Restless, Kane Davidson's Cape 35, and Mistery, Urs Waldmeier's Swarbrick $99, third.

In Premier Cruising, Greg MacMahon's Beneteau First 44.7 AfterNoon from Sydney's Pittwater was never out of the top two placings to win overall from Robbo Robertson's Bavaria Match 42 Monkey Magic, with Townsville yachtsman Wayne Millar's MBD 41 Zoe in third.

Victory in the Cruising with Spinnaker class was secured with a final race win by Simon Vincent's Rodgers-designed Ato, which took the series from Alabaster, lan and Kerry Westlake's Adams 13, and a new Hanse 370e Hans-on, jointly owned by Mooloolaba Yacht Club members Nick Cox and Col Thomas.

In Cruising without Spinnaker, Chille, Peter Hutchinson's New Zealand crewed Beneteau 473 took the honours in the final race, but the top three placings overall went to Whitsunday SC crews. Felicity, Lachlan Wilson's Clansman was first, with early series leader Mick Phillips' Spencer 30 Shearwater second and Lady Hawke, John Hudson's Oceanis 390 third.

 In the Trailable division, Charles Baker's Spider 22 Mk2m Baker's Dough sailed a consistent series to win overall from Bobsled, Bob McCamley's Spider 22 Mk1 and Spudgun, Bernie Ryan's RL24 all the way from Victoria.

Sportsboats' broken bits

The windy weather at the start of the regatta caused some carnage in the competitive Sports boat fleet, with former 18ft skiff world champion Peter Sorensen having to retire from racing on day one with a broken boom on his 8m Julian Bethwaite designed Vivace, while Julian Golding's Boatspeed 23 Charley, helmed by former Moth world champ Peter Moor was hobbled with a broken wing. Michael Grieve and Damien Van Deudekom's Rip it Up was dismasted.

Considerable interest at the front of the fleet focused on the brand new Sports 8 Revolution, a development of Vivace by her original owner Pierre Gal of Coffs Harbour. He teamed with Geoff Pearson of Sydney Yachting Centre to arrive at the Sports 8 production version which has a canting lift keel and a substantially bigger rig than Vivace. This first regatta for the Sports 8 revealed potentially frightening speed downwind but work still to be done to lift the boat's upwind performance and arrive at a more manageable craft.

Line honours were generally fought over by Vivace, Charley and the potent Stealthy, designed and built by Alan Carwardine and now owned by Bob Cowan of Lake Macquarie, who has had previous success in the sportsboat scene with Penguins on Parade.

The overall honours went to Team GUE, a Thompson 7 owned and skippered by Chris Williams from Sydney. Second was Gone Troppo, Jason Ruckert's Elliott 780c from Brisbane, and third was the much-travelled Road Warriors, Steve Battley's Thompson 7 from Perth.

Williams, whose brother Kim also raced in the regatta with his own Thompson 7 Rock 'n Roll, has had Team GUE for six years but has been busy with motorbike racing and other sailing classes for the past two years, during with time Team GUE has simply sat on its trailer. He said, "It's good to come back to sportsboat racing again. We dusted the boat off, put on a new suit of sails, and for the first couple of races we were a bit slow; we had a fifth, then a fourth, then a third and then we won the rest of them apart from the final race when we hit a turtle about 100 metres from the top mark and broke the rudder off."

William's crew was his regular bowman Tim Lees, Evan Beebe on the mainsheet and a local sailor called Nash in the middle of the boat.

While there were grumbles from some of the other sports boat sailors about modified Thompson 7s still carrying the favourable class handicap, Chris Williams says he and his brother are keen to rebuild strength in the T7 class. "A few years ago we would have 13 or 14 boats at every regatta, now it's dwindled away to three or four so we're keen to build it back up again.

"We'll try to have national champs for T7s in South Australia some time after Skandia Geelong Week.

"They are a very robust boat, as we've seen out here; they're very fast in zero to five knots and they're very fast in 40kts, and they don't break - unless you hit a turtle."

The second placegetter Gone Troppo received average points as redress for the third and fourth heats which skipper Jason Ruckert and his crew were unable to complete, when the eventual fourth placed So What attempted to duck their transom in a port/starboard crossing and crashed into them.

Young Brisbane skipper Tom Jordon's Egan 6 Liquid Tactics was an early regatta leader: "We are very light and downwind we fly", Jordon said. A dip in performance during the middle of the regatta led to his pint-sized boa finishing fifth overall.

HAHN PREMIUM RACE WEEK

HAMILTON ISLAND

By Rob Mundle

Photography Andrea Francolini

In direct contrast to last year - when the Tradewinds honked, the seas were up, and heavy clouds delivered what the locals call liquid sunshine - this year's Hahn Premium Race Week was at the opposite end of the spectrum - every day.

The conditions were unprecedented for what is Australia's biggest and most enjoyable offshore regatta. For the final four days summertime weather prevailed - light and warm winds from the north, and near cloudless skies. And even when the south-easterly did blow early in the week it didn't carry much clout.

It actually seemed appropriate that things were a bit different this year because Race Week will be different in the future. After being at the helm since the inaugural series 23 years ago, Regatta Director Warwick Hoban - the man who has moulded Race Week into the nationally and internationally acclaimed event that it is - announced he was calling it a day. And Castlemaine Perkins, which has held an equally lengthy association with the event, passed the naming rights sponsorship baton over to German car-maker, Audi. The good news is that both Hoban and Hahn Premium have left a legacy that will ensure that participants at future Race Weeks will enjoy even higher levels of pleasure, both on and off the water.

This exciting future that Race Week promises is enhanced by the seemingly endless enthusiasm of the Oatley family - great sailors, winemakers and outright owners of Hamilton Island. During the week the family patriarch, Bob Oatley (whose supermaxi Wild Oats XT took the triple crown in the last Rolex Sydney Hobart Race) proudly displayed two stunning development plans for the resort - the five star Great Barrier Reef Yacht Club (with Iain Murray as Commodore) and its associated retreat comprising 36 luxury villas, and then the Six Star Pebble Beach Resort sited on the north-western corner of the island.

These projects and other significant improvements on the island confirms that the Oatleys intend to make this destination Australia's answer to the Mediterranean's magnificent Porto Cervo, in Sardinia.

And in moving in that direction they plan to take Race Week along for the ride.

Money and magnificence were very much a fascinating ingredient, but the best story of Race Week came from a new division in the most popular section of the regatta - cruising. While the Grand Prix IRC boats strutted their stuff on centre stage and enjoyed intense competition it was a bloke in the Non-spinnaker Cruising division who became a star.

Dave Short, a 43-year-old diesel mechanic in the mining industry in outback Queensland, and a total newcomer to yachting, decided a year ago he wanted to try sailing, so he ventured to Sydney and bought a Hunter 33 which he now calls home in Townsville.

He then decided he should try racing, so entered the boat, Pro Beat Passion, in Race Week. He was joined by two mates and "anyone else I could find who wanted to come along for the ride" aboard what was one of the smallest yachts competing.

"We just came here for a good time," Short insisted ... so no one was more surprised than him when, going into the final race, Pro Beat Passion had a chance of taking overall honours. Things were looking good until disaster struck en route to the windward mark. The mainsail tore in two! It appeared all was lost, but then the need to succeed became the master of invention. Someone grabbed a shark hook that was on board and used it to punch holes in the mainsail, and then they laced the sail back together with "VB" cord. Determination, ingenuity and improvisation were enough for Pro Beat Passion to continue racing and win by just three seconds on corrected time, a result that meant outright victory in the division - and for Short the chance to win an Audi A4 Avant. All nine division winners were eligible for the car, which would be awarded to the sailor who recorded the best time around a gymkhana course of witch' hats (it had been created by Audi Motorsport Ambassador, Brad Jones, who was there to supervise). Sure enough, it was announced at the trophy presentation dinner that the man you could now call Dave "Shark-hook" Short had scored the best time - and therefore scored the car.

The Race Week fleet of 159 was down on previous years, but that didn't mean there was nything lacking in the competition. As usual the CYCA was well represented across all divisions, and by the end of the week many of the club's teams had mastered the conditions and claimed podium finishes.

However, the weather pattern did make things tough for race management: they found themselves with no option but to delay starts and alter courses on the last five days of racing because of the light winds. That didn't seem to worry most people while they waited to go out on the water. It gave many the opportunity to water ski, spinnaker fly, swim, sunbake, laze around, or watch the many large pods of whales that were cruising through the Whitsundays. And of course they also spent a lot of time thinking about friends back in the southern cities who were enduring winter.

With the two highest profile super-maxis - Alfa Romeo (Neville Crichton) and Bob Oatley's Rolex Sydney-Hobart race triple crown winner, Wild Oats XI - away in Sardinia for the Maxi World Championship, it was Grant Wharington's similarly sized Skandia that was the largest entry in the IRC Big Boat Division. Skandia showed superb upwind speed during the week but could not sail to her rating downwind, so struggled to make any impression on the result sheets.

As a consequence, the "never-say-die" Wharington went away from the week contemplating some drastic surgery - cutting off a large section of the back of the boat and replacing it with a fatter and flatter shape to improve the off-the-wind performance.

Despite there being only five boats in this division the racing was excellent. Defending champion Wild Oats X, with Mark Richards in his usual role as helmsman, was expected to set the pace, but some misjudged starts - including a spectacular and very resonant collision with Loki at the start of the last race, led to a third overall. Even after the impact Loki's owner, Stephen Ainsworth, was all smiles as his much improved, conventionally ballasted Reichel/Pugh 60 was proving to be very competitive against the canting keel yachts, so much so that he collected the trophy for second in the division. But the highest accolades were saved for Steven David, who went one better than last year and won the Big Boat trophy with Wild Joe. Since purchasing what was the Admiral's Cup winning Wild Oats IX - a Reichel/Pugh CBTF 60-footer - David has steadily built his team and improved the yacht during what is his first foray into the upper echelon of offshore racing. For this regatta, a hydraulic ram was fitted to the forward rudder to give better control, the spinnakers were made flatter and increased in area by 30 sq metres, and much effort went into fairing and finishing the underwater areas of the hull. David, who shared the steering with Chris Links, and had Cameron Miles calling the shots, said the light conditions were tailor-made for Wild Joe. That fact, coupled with the improvements and a determination to stay out of trouble during the racing, all contributed to the success.

The keenest competition in the Grand Prix level of the regatta came in the IRC Racing division where a flock of boats between 45ft and 50ft lined up. There were three Cookson 50s - Pussy Galore (Anatole Masfen), Living Doll (Michael Hiatt) and the new Aero (Eoin Fehsenfeld), two Reichel-Pugh 46s - Hardys Secret Mens Business (Geoff Boettcher) and XLR8 (Graeme Troon), and two DK 46s - Quantum Racing (Ray Roberts) and Dekadence (Philip Coombs).

Hardys Secret Men' Business and XLR8 were sporting new keel bulbs and Living Doll went for a rating advantage by having its canting keel locked in the vertical position.

The CYCA's Ray Roberts got away to a slow start with a 6th and 7^th but then kicked into gear and there was no stopping Quantum Racing from that point on. Roberts took the division by two points from Hardys Secret Men' Business and XLR8.

When you drop a third place as your worst result in an 11-race series you know you've had a very good week. So it was no surprise when, having done just that and taken out the Sydney 38 division, Stephen Kulmar's Shining Sea was named the "Yacht of the Week" across the nine divisions.

With a stunning scorecard of 1,1,2,1,2,2,1,3,1,1,1 for a total of 13 points Shining Sea beat Transfusion (Guido & Michelle Belgiorno-Nettis) on 24 points and Swish (Steven Proud) on 34 points. The "38s" enjoyed their usual high level of competition - a foretaste of what is to come next year when Race Week is the warm-up for the Inter Nations Championship, which will be decided there the following week.

With the light conditions suiting the smaller yachts, the CYCA's commodore, Geoff Lavis, and wife Pip, did a great job to take out third place in the Performance Handicap division with their well-travelled Inglis/Murray 50, UBS Wild Thing. Guy and Clark Holbert's Mumm 30, Rumbo, took the top prize while Western Australia's John Moore saw a reward for trucking his Swarbrick 10.2, Without Fear, across the continent when he took second prize.

Lachlan Murdoch's Swan 82, Ipixuna, towered above the opposition in the Premier Cruising section but couldn't make a dent on the result sheet in the light weather. Instead it was Wotif.com founder Graeme Wood's Sydney 47CR, Wots Next, who took the honours from TV finance man Paul Clitheroe's sistership, Balance. In the IRC Cruising, Ray Harris scored his long overdue big regatta win sailing the Beneteau 44.7, Honeysuckle.

There was action, entertainment, great stories, lots of laughs, superb scenery and excellent sailing across the entire week. Beyond the sailing it was aprés racing events onshore - the general social scene, the impressive expansion of the resort facilities, and the legendary Whitehaven Beach Party - that once again put Hamilton Island's Race Week at the pinnacle of Australia's regattas.