The Cockburn Sound Regatta, organised and run by The Cruising Yacht Club of WA, is a four-day event held between Boxing Day and New Year’s on the beautiful and protected waters of Mangles Bay off Rockingham. Once again conditions were excellent for the 67th regatta, with the breeze varying from 0 to 25 knots and anything in-between. There were a couple of delayed starts, but everything went well, and all races were completed. The racing was tight and interesting with some close finishes.

In summary, Tim Tucker reports:
Seeing out the year 2024, in a reduced HYC fleet, four boats waved the flag at the Cockburn Sound Regatta.
Not Negotiable won the KIC feeder race, and finished equal 2nd on total points in Div 2, but after drops and countback, had to settle with 4th.
With three 1st places, Deckchairs Overboard cleaned up JAM1.
Despite being “mismatched” in that division, Tosca hung in to finish 4th.
In JAM3, Show Me won over half the starts, didn’t trouble the finish team, but won the “Early Bird” registration prize…..

And from the CSR Facebook page:
“The race from Fremantle to Rockingham is the feeder race for any metropolitan based yachts and this year only 14 faced the starter’s gun to make the 14 nautical mile trip down from Fremantle to join the rest of the fleet. Several boats had checked the forecast and had chosen to arrive at their leisure, to avoid the predicted southerly. The SSW sea breeze was in early, reaching 20 knots, which suited Ray Martin’s Farrier Trimaran Beatrix which took line honours in under two hours. She missed out on the win however with another former winner, Greg Hill, taking 1st place by just over a minute, in his UFO 34, Not Negotiable. K-Factor skippered by David Thoms, took 3rd place.

The Jib and Main entrants were divided into three fleets and in JAM 1, Deckchairs Overboard (Neil and Wendy Harrison) took out the win by three points from Michael Giles’ Endorfin who was level with Rick Hoad’s Serendipity. Special mention should be made of Eugene Johnsen’s Bavaria 34 Tosca who was mismatched in JAM 1 but persisted in every race (including a 1st place and 3rd place) to finish in 4th place.

The Overall Regatta Champion is determined by a formula taking into account a boat’s gross points score and the sum of the total numbers of boats starting in each race in each Division. David Thoms on K-Factor had a fantastic regatta, coming 3rd in the Race to Rockingham, 1st in Division 2, winning the award for Best Dressed Crew and winning the Overall Regatta Champion Trophy.”

Unfortunately, Pinta and Farrouk were amongst the late withdrawals, particularly as Des was unable to defend his overall winner title in 2023, and would have won best dressed as he and Gail did at the Chris Grant memorial race.

John, Tim and Ray.