The Dead Dugong Day…

QLD Multihull Championships
Day 2 – Friday 7th April
By OG

The Dead Dugong Day…

Mr Meteorology cast a grey shadow over the Multihull fleet today and only managed to puff a weak 7 to 8 knots for the entire afternoon. Multihulls are known for their speed and agility, kamikaze acts the occasional wipe-out, however today was more of a snooze fest with crews catching up on some much needed beauty sleep.

Yesterday it was all about Voodoo Spirit, who claimed line honours in the first race, but today the jersey went to “Bare Essentials” skippered by Gordon Myers who not only smashed the fleet, but BLITZ’EM by a whopping 20 minutes! They were already showered and shaved with beverage in hand well before the next boat rounded the finish mark.

There were five types of weather today; light, frustrating, shifty, indecisive and shitty. The lack of breeze tormented the crews as they hastily changed their sail wardrobe, sometimes up to six or seven times before finally deciding to consume their lunch and ponder thoughts of yesteryear instead.

Regardless of there being no wind to speak of, the crews still managed to come home with breakages on board. Today’s causalities included a broken finger nail, a bruise, a paper cut (from the sailing instructions) and a bleeding nose. But the most severe incident was fractured egos, an injury with a 5% recovery rate.

The crew aboard an unnamed competing boat sarcastically advised they had a lovely day. “We had salad sandwiches, a mars bar, but still managed to lose our balls!” Ahhh ball bearings, always a painful replacement process involved with those things! “We lost 40 balls between 4 buoys… I’m confused to what my emotions should be!”

There may have been little to no breeze all day, but again you are reminded – these are MULTIHULLS!

When intending to compete in a Multihull regatta one must keep an extremely open mind. Anything and everything can happen, and potential for crisis is imminent… Today was no exception.

“VZ4RQ this is Myora, advising there is a dead dugong floating on the start line”

And there you have it, another unexpected event that one could only and should only expect from a multihull regatta. And to let you all know, the Dead Dugong Society was notified of the exact location of the deceased. May he rest in peace…

Tomorrow brings another day of racing with the forecast of 10 to 15 knots from the South West promising oscillating winds which will sure frustrate the sailors once more.

Again, we are without official PHS or OMR results, so the multitude of multihull sailors are swarming the vicinity of the RQ bar where the official results of the “Talk-It-Up-Cup” clearly show “Bare Essentials” as the clear leaders.

Click here (QMC_-_Race_2.pdf) to view Race 2 results
Click here (QMC_-_Race_1.pdf) to view Race 1 results