Melbourne to King Island prizes presented and crews head home

6:05 AM Mon 9 Mar 2009 GMT

'The beach is all cleaned up now. - M2KI' John Curnow Click Here to view large photo

With great running conditions from the South East presenting themselves on a beautiful Sunday morning, it was important to get the presentations completed early and crews away, after a stellar Melbourne to King Island (M2KI) for 2009.

As part of the ORCV rules now, if you're not there at the presentation, you don't get the prizes attached to your victories only the trophies at a later date. So as a result, the next race was to see who would collect the most bottles of ORCV wine. I'm pretty sure that particular prize went to 'Ninety Seven' and then when their Sailing Master, Noel May, also won the Plastic Bag raffle (by the way, it came with a 4kg Crayfish as an added bonus), it did prompt him to ask if anyone wanted to make the homeward voyage with them!!!

However, Laurie Ford from 'Spirit of Downunder' started to look very weighed down with his extra wine and the 120m drum of Donaghys rope he won, so perhaps he got the greatest cash equivalent out of the weekend. 'Isuzu Marine' were happy to be getting their name on the perpetual shield and 'Young Ones', in their first 'Paddock' foray, got the PHC prize. Full results are available at www.orcv.org.au/index.php?option=com_wrapper&;view=wrapper&Itemid=312

The King Island Dairy show bags also got cleaned up and why not. At $40ea, 65 persons decided 5 cheeses, yoghurt, chocolate dessert and crackers were a bargain. There were no portions of KI beef, as all the multiple kilo vac-packs of Scotch and Eye Fillet joined the queue of cargo being ferried back out to the yachts. Many thanks to Carol and Ian from the KIBC for arranging these - I'm sure they'll disappear just as quickly next year.

You plan to do what to me?! - M2KI - John Curnow Click Here to view large photo

This is what people want from you dear... - M2KI - John Curnow

Without doubt however, the biggest clean up was the one performed by the local Authorities last week. Over 150 Pilot Whales are buried under Sea Elephant Bay beach at Naracoopa now. Thankfully they managed to get around 50 off and as you can see from the image, there is nary a sign of the disaster that greeted King Island last Sunday night.