Lot's O' Gee

The Geelong Race Week

There were many so many boats and divisions at Geelong Week that I can’t report on them all so I will focus on types of boat that interest the average SA reader

Firstly, I think that most would say that Geelong Week regatta is becoming a ‘great’ regatta with many top boats turning up this year and huge fleet numbers. The whole town gets behind this event and its a great formula with a lots of sailing ‘tactical’ interest stemming from the mix of a long passage race, a shorter around the bay race plus 5 windward leewards on three different course areas – each with its own sea and weather conditions. Add to that lots of good looking ‘friendly’ locals and lots of well run social events and you have a great regatta.

In IRC, it is becoming pretty clear that to win you need a big production boat cruiser racer – this regatta was dominated by them. All bar one in the top 6 were heavy production cruiser racers.

Beneteau 44.7’s dominated the IRC results with the two 44.7’s entered getting first and second. Another Beneteau was sixth, that one a 40.7. The 47.7’s generally did not feature in the results.

The two Mark Mills designed DK 46’s had been the pre-race favourites – they ended third and 8th. The ‘works’ Quantum Sails crew beating the ‘works’ DK Yachts crew, who largely killed their regatta with a black flag OCS in race 7. The reality was they were probably racing for third behind the big Beneteaus anyway.

Fourth was “Gomez” a Sydney 47 – another big production cruiser.

The only exception to the big production boat domination was local legend and designer Robert Hick in his little Hick 32. He was fifth. That result was particularly impressive given that he must have been severely disadvantaged by sailing in air chopped up by the 40 odd bigger, faster boats.

The other interesting story at the ‘big end of town’ was the perceived failure of the two new Reichel Pugh 46 foot ‘race boats’. They couldn’t go close to sailing to their handicap and we not a quick across the water as one would have expected.

On the water, ignoring handicaps, the Open 66 ‘AAPT’ was dominant. Wild Oats did not do this regatta and following the demise of Skandia, Zana and Nicorette in December/ January AAPT is the only “maxi” left standing. The Cone of Silence stood out amongst the little boats. Surprisingly, it was much quicker than the new canting keel 30s and often was “first under forty” in an event with a lot of quality boats.

In the other divisions:

“Cydon” has dominated Sydney 38s for 12 months. This regatta was no different, They won with a race to spare.

The Super 30 class is showing signs of imminent death and without reform by its administrators, this regatta showed that few will bother entering in future. Indicative of the general disillusionment with Super 30’s and its 1970s derived handicap formula is that fact that the three newest Super did not even enter the Super 30 division. For the record the Super 30 handicap result went to yet another Bull 9000 - but that should be no should be no surprise as largely nothing other than a Bull 9000’s has won a Super 30 regatta in years.

Sports boats also showed the need reform for in their (arbitrary) handicaps – numbers were down and fewer top boats turned up than would be expected. The problem again was the dominance of the Thompson 7s. There were five Thompson 7’s in the event and some were probably very well sailed but surely the same type of boat getting 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th (again) should give administrators some cause for concern. (Though they have let this problem persist for years so who knows?) So who won this Thompson 7 benefit? Paul Heyes in “Max Power” out sailed everyone and ended the five year dominance of Chris William’s “Team GUE”.

Regards,

Punter

2/1/05