Sandy Bay sailors excel

INTERNATIONAL Cadet sailors from the Sandy Bay Sailing Club have again dominated at the 56th national championships sailed from the Metung Yacht Club in eastern Victoria.

The overall winners were sisters Brooke and Alicia Gaffney, from the Largs Bay Yacht Club in South Australia, sailing the appropriately named Endless Summer.

Five of the next six placings at the end of the 12-race regatta on this lake venue were from Sandy Bay.

As a result, the club is likely to be well represented in the Australian team for this year’s world championships.

Their performances in the huge fleet of 66 Cadet dinghies enabled the team from Hobart to retain the prestigious Tillett Trophy interstate competition.

Charlie Goodfellow and Lawrence Jeffs in Meltemi sailed a fine series to finish a close second overall, only once finishing outside the top 10 places.

Charlie won the Hutton Trophy for the first male sailor under 16 years of age, while Lawrence got his trophy for the first male crew in the regatta.

Hugo Allison, 12, already a world champion in Cadets as crew, won the trophy for being the top-placed skipper in his first nationals on the helm.

He also finished first skipper under 14 and the first boat, Shomken, with a male/ female crew, with Grace Hooper as his crew.

Hugo and Grace finished seventh overall, one place behind his elder brother Jack and Luca Groves, sailing Executioner,

Hugo, brother Jack and their mother, Felicity, then made a long road and air dash back to Hobart to compete in the SB20 sportsboat worlds on the River Derwent.

Felicity skippered the allwomen crew of Cook Your Own Dinner, Jack helmed the Hutchins School SB20 Warwick Dean, while Hugo was fourth crew member on the Victorian boat Ikon20.

Other SBSC crews in the top 11 at the Cadet nationals were Jacob McConaghy and Sam Hooper in Hurricane (third); Archer Ibbott and James Gough in Little Devil (fourth); and Amie Potter and Annabelle Lumsden-Steel, sailing Comrade (11th overall).

In Queensland, other young Tasmanians contested the 29er nationals and the Laser Radial Australian and Oceana championships, with Sam King also flying back to be helmsman of the SB20 Masterclass.

Sam finished fifth overall in the 2018 Laser Radial Australian and Oceana Open championships in a fleet of 75. He was the second-placed Australian and was only once outside the top 10 race finishers.

Tasmanians were strongly represented in the 29er nationals, also sailed in Brisbane, with William Wallace and Brendan Crisp finishing fourth with Wild Wind in the 43-boat fleet.

Rupert Hamilton and Finn Sprott placed ninth with HH, closely followed by Thomas Nitarat and Silas Hamilton in Hello in 11th place.

Ellan Galbraith was the top-placed woman skipper from Hobart, with Charlie Zeeman as crew on Skiffy. They placed 13th overall.

The all-girl crew of Alice Buchanan and Dervia Duggan finished 16th.

A huge fleet of 135 Optimists contested their nationals, with Hobart’s Oscar O’Donoghue finishing 10th in the gold fleet and his sister Adelaide second on the silver fleet.

Many of the Tasmanians, including Sam King, are heading back to Queensland this weekend for the Australian youth championships at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron. THE past couple of weeks of yachting on the Derwent has been all about state-of-the-art ocean-racing yachts and highperformance sportsboats, most designed and built within the past decade.

But yesterday there was a change of pace, with state-ofthe-art yachts of 40 years ago, the quarter-tonners, halftonners and one-tonners racing on the river for the Bellerive Yacht Club’s IOR Cup 2018.

Apart from level rating, the half-tonners and onetonners raced under the IOR rating rule, once used for the Sydney to Hobart, Maria Island and other offshore races.

This year’s IOR Cup has attracted more than 16 boats racing for the IOR, and a couple of stately craft contesting the Classic Yacht division.

Five of the 16 entrants for the IOR Cup were designed by Tasmanian Wally Knoop, among them the stillperforming-well Silicon Ship.

A recent winner lining up for harbour racing is Phil Soley’s Farr-designed halftonner Mako, which made a clean sweep of all handicap categories in the Launceston to Hobart race.

BYC Commodore Graham Mansfield is back sailing with his Dubois 40 Black Magic.

Ed Dubois was a prolific designer of half-tonners and one-tonners and is well represented in the IOR Cup, as are Bruce Farr designs.

The IOR Cup began yesterday with a twilight race, with three back-to-back races today.

The race results are being determined under PHS scoring because none of the yachts entered still has an IOR rating.