RPAYC ACTIVITIES
SEALINK MAGNETIC ISLAND RACE
ALFRED’ S FUN INVASION
The Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club members and supporters invaded the SeaLink Magnetic Island Race Week at the end of August, enjoying the sixday regatta with its great competition and parties.
RPAYC was the largest club contingent outside of the host club, Townsville Yacht Club. Seven yachts and their crews were in the thick of 58-boat national fleet contesting the ninth annual regatta. Also on the water was the race management team of Stephen and Rosemary Merrington.
In the IRC fleet Bob Steel’ s new Quest finished on the podium in third place. Jason Antill’ s skippered Farr 40 Komodo finished in fifth and Rob Curtis and Glen Tailby’ s Kerazy finished in sixth. Even with this result Tailby was happy with their regatta.“ Our biggest goal was to stay in contact with the Farr 40s.” They did a very good of that.
The division was won resoundingly by Peter Sorensen’ s The Philosopher’ s Club. The next three places came down to a count-back between David Currie’ s Farr 40 Ponyo, Quest and Leon Thomas’ Farr 40 Guilty Pleasures VI. They all finished on 18 points. Ponyo found their form in the last two races, Quest missed the start of Race 6 when their mainsheet got caught and then they hit the mark, and Guilty Pleasures found themselves caught up in racing the other two 40s rather focusing on their own game.
On PHS The Philosopher’ s Club was the winner again with Komodo finishing fourth, Kerazy in fifth and Quest in eighth.
Geoff and Jen Fogar’ s Ruby finished on the podium in third place in large the Cruising Spinnaker Division 1. Peter Byford’ s L’ Esprit wasn’ t so lucky. He finished in 15th.
In Cruising Spinnaker Division 2, Mike Selbie’ s D’ Euphoria finished in 17th in his second time at the regatta.“ We enjoyed ourselves. The wind was really quite good all days.
“ It was good to see so many Alfred’ s people and Ruby do so well. Yes, I think we will be going back again,” Selbie said.
Rob Yeates’ skippered a Townsville yacht Jabiru to finish seventh in Cruising Non Spinnaker.
Komodo was the winner of the Antill Marine prize of $ 1000. Antill, who is the Antill is the One Design representative on the sailing committee, kindly donated the prize money back to TYC so that the club could start to raise funds to support a Townsville team competing in the RPAYC’ s One Design Regatta program.
“ The program at the RPAYC is going from strength to strength. I wanted to take advantage of and further the links between Antill Marine and TYC to the benefit of both clubs,” Antill said.
The tenth anniversary of the SeaLink Magnetic Island Race Week will be held from September 1 to 6, 2016. Chair of the event organising committee, Paul Victory, has committed to making the event even bigger than this year with entertainment options, a marine trade exhibition and more great competition.“ We are also hoping that we will be welcoming an even bigger team of Alfred’ s sailors and supporter in 2016.”
ARTICLE AND PHOTO BY TRACEY JOHNSTONE
66 YACHTSMAN