A warm, sunny day with a fresh breeze was ideal for the start of the HYC’s Fairway ocean race with 17 yachts across three divisions ready to spend the best part of five hours completing the 22 NM course, except for Wayne Pitcher’s J122 Lithium who, as the premier greyhound of the fleet, took just 3hr 50min 24 sec to race around the course.

Avoiding much of the Fremantle shipping channels, the new course was still a challenge with a long beat out to Fairway, halfway to Rottnest in a fading breeze, before sea breeze relief and a return spinnaker run to Floreat then Sorrento before finishing at HYC.

In the nine-boat fleet of division one, Mark Pitt’s Mulberry, who won in 2016, continued their current ocean success winning ahead of Lithium and Bruce Bradford’s Whispering Jack with only a couple of minutes between each on corrected time. Bad Habits (Ian Holder) missed third by only 28 seconds but it was another five minutes to Sophia (Bruce Utting), Mimosa (Tony Brooke) and Circa (Martin Eyer) who were only seconds apart on corrected time for places 5 to 7.

In division two Emille Janssen, skippering Volant, won by less than a minute from Tim Tucker on Show Me, ruing the time lost at the start (probably a minute), with Mark Taylor’s Helga in third place. Fastest around the course was Bart Brouwer skippering Covert Operation but had to settle for fourth place.

The inaugural winner in division one of the Fairway race back in 1989 was Ian Morrison skippering Intuition; this time first and fastest with Marc Carpenter at the helm of Intuition, however currently competing in division three. A much more recent addition to the HYC fleet, Kind of Blue (Boyd Timler), was second with an even newer addition in Y-Knot (Stuart Marks) in third place.

The Fairway race was a good hit-out for those competing in the around Rottnest Pot of Gold or coastal Dash for Cash ocean races on Saturday 18th January. The HYC fleet for POG includes experienced campaigners Bad Habits, Lithium, Helga, Mulberry, Surfer Rosa, and hopefully Circa and first-timer Farrouk. We wish them and all the Dashers fair winds and following seas in their quest for the cash.


Many thanks to the start management team, many of whom were also there for the finish, some six hours later; Rob Gouldsmith, Rob James, Jill Amy, Sandy Grant, Jill Tanner, Sue Carter, Gary Kaye and Greg Lynch. Thanks to Rob James for excellent photos taken from the tower, now posted on the keel cloud.

John Bird