A beautiful sunny Sunday to be out on the water for those going fishing however for the yachties competing in the fifth winter race there was only a breath of wind from the south-west making it a struggle to get to the start-line and beyond. Cognisant of the need to also finish the race, the committee decided on a short course of just three legs over three miles, cheekily suggesting it could be shortened if the wind dropped out altogether. Fortunately the wind stayed and even reached 6 knots so that all boats finished and resulted in some close finishes, which is expected with the handicap start.

Back-marker Whispering Jack (Bruce Bradford) was fastest around the short course in division one but lowered their colours to Mulberry (Mark Pitt) who finished 1.52 ahead with Circa (Martin Eyer) in third place. Mulberry had competed in the final race of the Valmadre Cup the day before (see below).


In division two Farrouk (Des and Gail Riley) was first and fastest holding off Not Negotiable (Greg Hill) by a mere 25 seconds after a tussle on the spinnaker run home. Volant (Emille Janssen, Frank Hageman, John Ball, Kevin Meta) finished in third place 1.15 behind Farrouk.

There were nine starters in division three with the first five finishing within six minutes. Fastest around the track was Hard Evidence (Peter Hibberd) however she failed to catch Vaya Con Dios (Chris Blackney) by 4 seconds at the finish line: less than a boat length. In third place was Mimosa (Tony Brooke), showing no loss of speed after a 1500 nm trip to the Montebellos and return.

More Mulberry Magic
On Saturday Mulberry finished second in the final race of the Valmadre Cup Series conducted by FSC on behalf of Offshore Racing WA to clinch first place on PHS and second place on IRC. The experienced crew was Ken Collett, Jos Colvin, Marshall Fox, Sergey Makushynski, Ray Murphy, Wayne Pitcher, Mark Pitt, Matt Rimes, Barney Pountney, Magda Urban and Eleanor Wise. In a fleet of eleven division one yachts from river and Fremantle yacht clubs this is a great achievement for Mark and the team.

Thank you to Damian Martin for his drone photos of Sunday’s race some of which can be seen on the Keel Photo Cloud.

John Bird