2010 Qld Contender State Championships

Day 2 Qld Contender State Championship

RQYS November 2009-11-30

Matt Mulder – is he on the longest winning streak?

Matt came, he saw, he conquered. That pretty much sums up the 2 day regatta of this year’s Qld Contender State Championships. Held as part of the Sail Brisbane regatta, the Toll – National Pacific supported Qld fleet lined up with the most boats we had seen for a long while. 15 entered but with one skipper knocked down with a vomiting bug, 14 lined up for the first of four races on Saturday. We were fortunate to welcome Crazy McLean and Scott McInereney from FNQ for the regatta as well as our World Champion candidates for Master and Youth, Jan Mulder and James Dahl respectfully. Steven Grimes and Rod Hieatt chose this regatta to come out of Contender retirement and to give us all a hurry up. Many of the competitors were sporting brand new sails (Matt and Phill included with the black Norths).

What the hell is going on here??? GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

To the sailing.

Saturday was a pretty warm NNW’ly forecast to get to 25 knots. We saw a fair bit of variability from just trapping to fully powered and starting to dump.
Race one saw Matt get a bit of a jump on the fleet to lead from the start and head out to the left hand side. Geoff Fisher followed him around the top mark in his new Bonezzi closely followed by Steven Grimes, Phill Evans, Andrew Griffiths and the rest of the fleet in a close pack. Matty and his new sail promptly did a horizon job while Geoff, Grimesy, Phill and Andy all bunched up. Up the second beat and Geoff fluffed a tack to “kind-of-capsize” gifting a break to Grimesy. Unfortunately for Steven, his tiller extension pulled out of the tiller leading to a capsize. Geoff was able to sail into 2nd closely followed by Andrew who came through Phill. Steven was able to limp across the line without an extension while he was being mowed down by the ever fast on a run Scott Bowman. Next through was rapidly improving Roger who had been having a great tussle with James Dahl. Just over their shoulder was Rod and Steve Toms who both sailed a great race – the first for a while for Rod who missed the start and a satisfying finish for Steve who is very new to the class. Unfortunately, Crazy in his early pre-racing enthusiasm suffered a bit of breakage and so missed the start due to returning to the beach for repairs. Similarly, Scott broke a halyard and spent some time on the side while lashing up the sail. Jan and Ian Bowman were delayed and just missed the start.

More…

Mast fall down

'SKANDIA on the plane - Rolex Sydney Hobart 2008' © Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi

One of the seven supermaxis entered in the 2009 Rolex Sydney to Hobart race, Grant Wharington’s 98 foot Supermaxi, Etihad Stadium, (formerly Skandia Wild Thing) has lost its rig on its delivery to Sydney.

Late on Friday this afternoon, the boat was doing approximately 25 knots downwind, with no spinnaker, when the mast simply failed, something that has Grant and his crew baffled.

They are now heading to Eden to re-fuel and continue under motor en route to Sydney.

All 20 crew on board are accounted for and no one has been hurt in the incident, which has everyone dumbfounded.

‘Not long before this happened, a number of us were talking about how good the boat was feeling and how excited we were about the Rolex Sydney Hobart ‘said Grant.

The delivery, undertaken by the full race crew, got underway at 8:30am this morning (Friday 11 Dec) from Mornington, and they were 10 miles off Deal Island when disaster struck.

After making contact with the shore crew, Grant’s next phone call was to supermaxi rival, Neville Crichton, owner of Alfa Romeo, who has a spare 45 metre carbon fibre mast in Europe, and is willing to provide it to Grant to allow him to get to the start line on Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day.

The biggest challenge now is getting the mast from the south of France to Sydney in the next few days to have crew working around the clock to assemble in time for the 1pm start on the 26th of December.

It requires a 747 cargo plane that can take a 900 kilogram-45 metre cylinder at short notice…!

Etihad Stadium, who won the Amazing Naming Rights draw on Tuesday of this week, is talking with their Etihad Airways contacts to see how they might be able to assist.

If the mast is able to be flown out of Europe and into Sydney within the next 4 to 5 days, there is a very strong chance of the Etihad Stadium Supermaxi lining up with the six other supermaxis in a little over two weeks time.

The boat is expected to arrive in Eden between 4 and 6am tomorrow morning – Saturday 12th December.

by Jody O’Brien 9:35 PM Fri 11 Dec 2009
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