Brisbane to Gladstone race attracts quality fleet

9:44 AM Tue 24 Mar 2009 GMT

'Wot Now' Andrea Francolini / Audi &copy

Queensland Cruising Yacht Club's award winning Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race has attracted another high standard fleet for the 61st Blue Water classic starting from Sandgate on Good Friday morning.

Champion New South Wales skipper Ray Roberts will defend his 2008 race win with Quantum Racing while Graeme Wood the 2008 Queenslander of the Year promises to be a major contender with the equally impressive sloop Wot Now.

Skipper Graeme Wood and the Wot Now crew have built their promising Gladstone race challenge after finishing third in the 2008 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.
The clash between these two outstanding ocean racing crews will be a highlight and Ray Roberts who clinched his first of two Gladstone Race wins with Millennium in 1995 will be banking on the tactical experience and a slight advantage of course knowledge to ward off the Wot Now challenge.

However both crews who have successfully mastered the storm tormented Tasman Sea are expecting to face another supreme test of offshore sailing in a race which has a history of being contested in sail stressing South East trade winds.

The race to record the fastest corrected handicap course time will become an open contest if these fresh and high action spinnaker sailing winds blow in on Good Friday.

Both Quantum Racing and Wot Now which have proved their all angle sailing speed to beat the clock will need to log fast averages to ward off the group of match racing Farr 40's Elleven, Bribie Star, Cracklin Rosie and Night Nurse and former race winners Wistari and Pagan.

Wistari will contest her 41st race and her second generation skipper Scott Patrick is hoping for another fresh spinnaker sailing wind forecast and wave surfing conditions to give the plywood sloop a strong chance to outpace the modern yachts and add to her success in 1971, 1976, 1977 and 1982.

A strong wind forecast will also suit the Peter Kerr skippered Pagan which recorded a speedy 26 hour 3 minute 44 second corrected handicap when she won the 1964 race which was delayed to an Easter Saturday start when gales from a tropical storm lashed the South Queensland coast.

The present complex nature of the weather systems suggest a chance that moderate to fresh south east winds will blow over the Easter Weekend which will strengthen the chance for Peter Harburg's Mark Bradford skippered Black Jack to win line honours while Quantum Racing and Wot Now head the handicap challenges to win the prestigious 61 year old Courier-Mail Cup as the 2009 champion.

by Ian Grant

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