Prominent Derwent Sailing Squadron member Scott Brain, one of the first Hobart sailors to buy an SB20 one-design sports boat when the class was introduced four years ago, has won the 2016 Tasmanian championship on the River Derwent.
A star-studded, record fleet of 23 SB2os contested the championship with Brain sailing Ronald Young Builders to victory in a closely fought series within the Banjo’s Shoreline Crown Series Bellerive Regatta over the weekend.
Brain, a past Tasmanian champion in the SB20 class, sailed consistently throughout the eight race regatta while his nearest opposition went off on a ‘covering’ each other in the final race.
Brain finishing the regatta and the championship with an eighth (his discard) and a fourth and second on day two to end the series with a net 21 points. Over the weekend his scorecard read: 4-1-4-5-1-(8)-4-2.
In the final race Nick Rogers (Karabos, DSS/RYCT) and Michael Cooper (Export Roo, RYCT) covered each other to finish 12th and 14th respectively in the 23 boat fleet. These were their drop races and Karabos finished second overall with a net 24 points, Export Roo on a net 30 points.
Karabos’ scorecard read 11-1-2-3-4-2-(12), Export Roo’s 2-3-7-2-6-8-(14) with foiler Moth sailor Rob Gough winning the final race, steering Difficult Woman (DSS) to take fourth place overall on 37 points, closely followed by Sudden Impulse (Richard Fader, RYCT ) on 44 points and two-race winner 2Limited (Greg Prescott, RYCT) with a net 47.5 points.
It was a good regatta for the Cooper family with father and son sailors Michael Cooper and William Cooper, who plan to head overseas this year to take on the world’s best sailors in the SB20 sports boats and International Cadet world championships, both showing their sailing skills at the Crown Series Bellerive Regatta.
Michael Cooper and his crew of David Chapman and RYCT Commodore Matthew Johnston plan to sail Export Roo in the SB20 Worlds at Cascais, Portugal, while his teenage son William (14) and Hugo Allison (11), the current world champion crew, have been selected to represent Australia at the Cadet worlds in Argentina.
William Cooper, representing the Sandy Bay Sailing Club, took the family honours over the weekend, sailing Impulse to a convincing win in highly competitive International Cadet class, winning four of the seven races.
His father had to be content with third overall in the record fleet of SB20s after a hard-fought series against a star-studded fleet which produced five different winners of the eight races: Ronald Young Builders (2), Karabos, Greg Prescott’s 2 Unlimited (2), Matthew Pilkington’s Balios and Difficult Woman, skippered by foiler Moth champion Rob Gough.
Racing was delayed for between 30 and 45 minutes on a windless River Derwent until a south-easterly sea breeze moved up the river, turning the day into a perfect day for sailing, sunny, temperature in the mid-20s and a steady breeze.
As the day warmed, so did the competition with some aggressive starts with a number of boats ‘black flagged’ for starting line infringements in the SB20s and the Laser dinghies.
Paralympian Matt Bugg, an RYCT and DSS member, won six of the seven races in the International 2.4mR class.
In the keelboat classes, Derwent Sailing Squadron Vice Commodore Peter Haros climaxed a winning streak in which he won the valuable prize for early entries in the Crown Series, then sailed Wings Three to victory in both the AMS and PHS categories of the Performance Cruising division 1.
In the premier Racing division, Matthew Denholm’s Mumm 30 Cleopatra from the BYC won the AMS and PHS handicap categories with Invincible (Darren Clark) taking out IRC.
Peter Campbell
22 February 2016
