Saturday afternoon: NNW at 30 knots-plus, gusting to 50 knots. Sunday: SSE at 10-14 knots, gusting to 17 knots. What a difference 24 hours can make to sailing (or not sailing) on the River Derwent!\
On Saturday, the Derwent Sailing Squadron was forced to cancel this season’s opening race for the Combined Clubs Harbour Series when NNW winds reached near 40 knots late morning, gusting to 50 knots by early afternoon.
Today, 24 hours later, the DSS was able to conduct the Sprint Series for the SB20 one-design sports boats in perfect sailing conditions, a 10-14 knot SSE breeze, with occasional gusts to 18 knots.
All five scheduled short windward/leeward races were held, producing four different winning boats and top three placings shared between seven of the eight-boat fleet.
Overall victory, the outcome of consistent sailing, went to class veteran Stephen Catchpool, sailing Hypertronics to victory with a scorecard of 2-1-4-2-4 for 13 points in the no-drop series.
Just two points astern came Richard Fader’s Sudden Impulse, with placings of 3-6-3-1-3 and another two points to Greg Prescott’s 2Unlimited with placings of 4-2-1-9-1, recovering well after being black-flagged in race four.
The other race win went to Scott Brain helming Ronald Young Builders, while other placegetters during the Sprint Series included Paul Burnell (The Honeybadger), Andrew Smith (Fruit Machine) and Hunt Gore (Pez).
While only eight SB20s contested today’s racing, there are now 21 boats owned in Hobart and class officers are confident of a big fleet in the upcoming Audi Showdown regatta.
Peter Campbell
18 October 2015
