10:30 AM Wed 30 Dec 2009 GMT
Australia today won the International 14 class Teams Racing event at Manly on Sydney Harbour.
The Australian No.1 team won the two-day event from runners up Great Britain.
The Teams Racing was held in near perfect conditions ranging from 8 to 18 knots of sou'east and flat water in the protected waters of North Harbour.
The teams consisted of five boats with four racing at any given time and one in reserve. The format involved back-to-back short windward leeward races.
Team AUS 1 was Del Boca Vista (Devine/Jones), George 1st (Massey/Wilsdon), Too Late too Stop Now (Krstic/Wilson), Ronstan Irwin Sails (Irwin/Perry), Ray and the Crazy 88s (Anderson/Coutts).
The GBR team consisted Greenheart (Pattison/Tait), GBR 1484 (Heywood/Clay), GBR 1520 Roborowski (Nurton/Ash).
Current Australian Champion Brad Devine showed plenty of poise in the first final to clear out of the pack and win in his new boat which is beginning to show a good turn of speed.
Mind you, it did not hurt the Australian no.1 team by having current World Champion Archie Massey on their side. Massey and his crew of Dan Wilsdon are clearly going fast and have boatspeed to burn at the moment.
Massey said because he is now a resident in Australia and because he was 'voted onto the Team at the Perth AGM at the last nationals', he competed in the Teams Racing under the Australian flag.
He does however intend to sail the Worlds under the GBR banner but still contest the Nationals.
'I did not mind joining the Australians as the Brits have won the Teams event for the past five years,' Massey said today.
'We (Australia) had the faster team but they are better team races.'
In the end it was a combination of Massey's speed and team tactics that laid a solid foundation for the Australian victory in what is the traditional curtain raiser for the World Championship which begins with the Invitation Race on 2 January.
Third place in Teams Racing went to Germany whose team included Just in Time (Borkenstein/Dietric), Killn'floor (Roocks/Holscher), ERT (Schultze/Ladwig), Goldfinger (Reinsch/Weidling), Unbekannter No.2 (Schuerch/Thiessen).
Teams Racing Results for 30 December 2009 were as follows:
Semi 1:
GBR d AUS 2 - 2 races to nil
Semi 2: Aus 1 d GER - 2 races to nil
Final: AUS 1 d GBR - 2 races to nil.
by Neil Patchett
|
