The important advantage of sail power and waterline length paved the way for the Swan 45 Tulip to predictably win the line honours over the Whitsunday Sailing Clubs sprint race course last week.

 Her owner skipper Bernie Van’t Hof has continued with the dominating form which allowed the Tulip crew to score a come from behind 1 point win in the Telcoinabox Airlie Beach Race Week IRC cruising class championship.

However while the Tulip crew mastered the variable breeze to claim the first to finish award her smaller and lower handicap rivals, the Scott Jutson designed 42 Another Fiasco (Damien Suckling), Harold Menelaus steering the John Reichel and Jim Pugh designed 36 Treasure V111 and John Galloway’s Ron Holland 10.5m Queensland Marine Services filled the top three places on handicap.

Skipper Damien Suckling who has the personal distinction of winning the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Performance Handicap trophy set the pace for handicap honours.

Both he and crew applied a sensible tactical strategy which allowed Another Fiasco to maintain the required boat speed to outpace their .975 rating and hold a strong grip on the fastest corrected handicap.

They progressively saved their time to finish with a 36 second win over Treasure V111 while Queensland Marine Services held on to fill third place 18 seconds ahead of  the series leader Craig Piccinelli’s Wobbly Boot.

Peter Mitchelson continued to prove there are many more good sailing miles left in his ageing Austral Clubman 8 Lorna Rose Too when he intelligently steered his faithful old yacht to a deserved line and corrected time double.

The crafty skipper set up the win when Lorna Rose Too answered the challenge from Brian Fleming’s Concubine to secure the line honours with a handy 1 minute 12 second margin which gave them enough leeway to win the line and handicap double while C-Eagle (Bob Beale) and Riff Raff (Dan White) filled the minor places on corrected time

By Ian Grant.

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Last Updated ( Sunday, 02 September 2012 )