Thirty footers have proven a most effective tool in this year’s East Australian autumn long distance ‘classics’.

In the first of the ‘classics’, the 370-mile ‘Sydney to Mooloolaba’, the boats were 250 miles down the course when the wind came in from behind at a meaty 25 – 30 knots. This piece of good fortune blew 2 Mumm 30’s home, at averages of 12 knots over the last 150 miles into first and second on handicap. Likewise, the hard running was to our Reichel Pugh 31’s liking and The Cone of Silence’s finished third behind AAPT and Wild Joe. It was a wild wet final 12 hours during which The Cone was averaging about 16 knots across the ground on the GPS. During this period The Cone surfed up to and past several quick boats all going flat out themselves – first it was the Farr 40 AFR Midnight Rambler, then the Inglis 50 UBS Wild Thing, then the Volvo 60 Seriously Ten and finally the Farr 52 OD Ichi Ban.

The Brisbane to Gladstone also saw thirty footers surfing home to handicap honours. The first five handicap places went to thirties – the winner being the 40 year old diamond class yacht “Saltash II” – though calling it ‘diamond class’ is perhaps a bit misleading as it has been much modified over the years into quite a slippery little weapon.

The Cone again finished 3rd across the line in the Gladstone – this time behind AAPT and Heaven Can Wait.

A feature of this year’s Gladstone was dodging ‘tornados’ off Fraser Island. There were some hairy stories after several yachts were hit by twisters and much of the after race ‘bar talk’ was of several sailors being lifted off their feet in the strong upward pressure inside a ‘twister’. Some of these things were monsters – big grey tubes a quarter of a mile wide, that made an ominous rumbling roar as they sucked tons of water up several thousand feet into the sky and causing torrential rain all around. Others were smaller, still making fearsome noises but ‘only’ sucking water a couple of hundred feet high. Each ‘spout’ was forming just off the coast and then tearing up everything in its path as it charged offshore and through the fleet of race boats.

If they weren’t actually hit, most crews had stories of dodging a waterspout or sailing between two. With the limited manoeuvrability that comes with spinnakers on in 25 knots of breeze, it was not something that many will forget in a while.

During this ‘twister’ period, we witnessed what surely must be one of the more amazing feats of ‘press on sailing’ anyone has seen for a while. The Mumm 30 Tow Truck was hit by a smallish ‘twister’ and instead of pulling the canvas off like sane people would, they simply kept their kite up sailed a complete 360 degree circle around the circumference of the ‘twister’. The helmsman later commented, “I didn’t really know what was happening. The luff of the kite kept collapsing so I kept bearing away to keep it set and before I knew it we had gone a full circle.”