Gretel II’s big win in regatta weekend

FAMOUS former America’s Cup challenger Gretel II showed her evergreen racing ability in yesterday’s final race of the Cygnet Regatta Weekend, winning both the Classic and Division One.

The near 50-year-old Twelve Metre class yacht, now based in Hobart, was Australia’s challenger at Newport, Rhode Island, winning one race and losing a second on a protest in 1970 against the New York Yacht Club’s Intrepid.

Yesterday, Gretel II outsailed an aged fleet in the Classic division and beat modern yachts on corrected time in Division One.

Skippered by Steven Shield from the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, Gretel II towered above the rest of the 48-boat fleet as they raced around a course on Kangaroo Bay.

Gretel II won Division One from the re-created Eight Metre class yacht Varg, skippered by Karl Carlstrom, with third place going to Prion, a David Lyons-designed Mount Gay 30, a light displacement, 9.59m LOA yacht. Now owned by John Dryden, Prion also won Saturday’s passage race from Kettering to Cygnet.

In the Classic Division, Gretel II won from Varg, with third place going to Kettering Yacht Club member Brent McKay’s Yleena, a comfortable USdesigned Friendship cruising yacht, built in Hobart in 1948.

Jezebel, sailed by Port Cygnet Sailing Club past commodore Charles Le Cornu, was second, with third going to Sabre, a gaffrigged 12-square metre sharpie skippered by Gordon Stewart, also from PCSC.

Sabre is one of the few remaining “heavyweight” sharpies which were a class at the Melbourne Olympics.

John Devereaux, commodore of the Port Cygnet Sailing Club, which has successfully revived the Cygnet Regatta, first sailed in 1863, named Mike Hutchinson’s Emotional Rescue, a Hobie 33, as Champion Yacht of the 2019 Regatta.