It was a great day for sailing on Saturday when the Batemans Bay Sailing Club held its fifth race of this season’s Bay Cup series.
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This was a handicap start race where the quicker boats gave the slower boats a head-start based on past performances. Race Officer Dave Magill and his trusty sidekicks Terry Paton and Roger Rowe aboard the committee vessel Clarence the Clocker set a boat end favoured start line.
The course consisted of a work from the start to Chain Bay, a shy reach to the marine park middle mark, followed by a broad reach to the leeward mark at Caseys Beach before returning to Chain Bay.
Dion Perrins’ lovely cruiser racer Ghoster was first off, continuing her short handed run with three on board so there would be no spinnakers today. She was followed by John Drummond’s North Shore 310 True North, then the mighty X45 Xanthia skippered by James Gardiner.
The smallest boat in the fleet, the well sailed S80 Avior skippered by Tony Sutton, actually started after the biggest boat Xanthia. The final three boats were the Adams 10.6 sister ships Attitude (Simon Byrne), Accolade (Lachlan Brown), and Wishful Thinking (Andrew Bain).
The last two boats were off at the same time, although Bain was in a generous mood and started 30 seconds later than necessary. By this stage the lead boats were already around the top mark.
The bigger boats made gains on the spinnaker reach down to Casey’s. On the next work the breeze dropped from 15 knots to below five knots at times, favouring the boats which were in front.
Ghoster maintained her lead to the finish to win from Avior and Attitude. Wishful and Accolade had a great duel around the course. Accolade finished two seconds ahead, but rates slightly higher on AMS so Wishful claimed the AMS victory by four seconds from Accolade and Attitude.
Full results are up on the BBSC website www.bbsc.org.au.