Report - |
From Ken Marsh |
Queen's Birthday weekend in June. The Hazelwood Sauna regatta was on again. 160 boats of all description made the trip to the Lake. 12 taipans sailed not including Colin Andrews in his tripan a 3 hulled boat without trapeze wires. The weather was fine with a few showers on the saturday night the winds were generally light with the Saturday race, the only race that required trapezing. The camping was good but a big fire was nessesary to keep warm and to tell tall stories about past exploites and talk about people who were not there. |
All the taipans sailed in Division 1, the fifth start after all the mono's. Division 1 included Tornados with spinakers, A Class, F16's and Mosquito's with kites. Nine cat rigged Taipans 1 sloop rigged and one 5.7 sailed This boat was sailed by Jeff Southall who travelled all the way from S.A. to compete a 12 hour car drive. Marty Monster turned up in his f16 taipan ( has wider hulls) but failed to complete a race. |
In total there were 5 races. Race 1 being the only race that was not shortened. Race 2 was abandoned when the leading boats failed to see the shorted course flag. A protest against the sailing commitee was upheld because it could not be proved if the flag was up when they rounded the mark. A a contentious issue at the time and tempers flaired. |
The regatta winner of division 1 was Gary Maskiell who's 50th. birthday happened to be on Saturday night. He sailed his f16 mosquito or spinaker rigged mosquito depending which regatta he enters. A 9 point difference in the VYC yardstick is a bit much in the same boat and a few sailors were upset about this and wanted to take it up with the Yachting Victoria yardstick committee. Second overall was Chris Boag from Port Melborne yacht club with results of 2.abn.5.2.2 in the 5 races. Third outright was a stingray saled by Mitch Bayliss also from PMYC the only one left sailing in Victoria; trying to convince him to get a taipan but no deal. |
The taipan results for this regatta were Chris Boag 1st. Chief commissioner Colin Doddsie sailing in the wrong trousers second and Paul Campbell from Altona 3rd. Paul sailed a brilliant race 4 to pull of a division win. A drug test was in order after racing but the beer was to strong and the test failed to give a valid result. |
At the final presentation by the La Trobe Valley Yaght club the much awaited draw for the Goodall square top sail was held and witnessed by the 5 remaining taipan sailors. The winner from 84 entrants and 220 names was DENNIS BAKER from Albury a NSW entrant had finally won. The previous 4 winners having all been from Victoria. Congratulations Dennis. Ring Greg and put in your order. |
The traveller series I hope will continue. Hopefully Michael Jopp will take over and run the events this year. As of now hazelwood was race 1 the next event will possibly be at Sugarloaf sailing club in September. I shall talk to Greg about another sail for this year's traveller series sorry about the minor prizes from Ashby they did not happen. Seems he was to busy sailing elswhere. |
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