State Masters Port Stephens
Vanessa Dudley receiving one her two cubes from PSSAC’s VP Mike Lee
The State Masters run at Port Stephens Sailing and Aquatic Club saw conditions which tested sailors and officials alike. There were just over 100 entries (49 Radial 46 Standard and 7 4.7′s). The PSSAC did a great job in running the event both on and off the water. The only hitch was when a Radial sailor here after to be named Sparky dragged his dolly mounted Laser under the power line causing a power outage which left the Standard Rig sailors to shower in the dark with cold water – serves them right for having so many general recalls.
There were good SE and SW breezes over the weekend and lots of dense rain clouds and – suprise suprize – quite a bit of rain. Saturday saw Race Officer Andrew McLachlan delay the starts and send the fleets back home to allow the wind to settle. This was a good call because after an hour or so the wind stabilised and gave good fair conditions until the final stages of last race of the day. With all the delays racing concluded at around 6.00pm.
After the long day on the water 90 sailors and friends joined a dinner at the Ibis Resort. At the dinner shirts were presented to those Masters who later this month will be travelling to Oman for the World Masters. There are 26 entered in the Worlds from NSW/ACT out of 33 Australian entries in this event.
On Sunday there was a useful breeze circa 10 to 18 knots and the 4.7′s and Radials were started right on schedule. From then on the schedule was shot with the need to change the course and line several times as the wind swung. The Standard Rig fleet caused several airings of the black flag. This became contageous and the Radials had a few general recalls again resulting in the black flag being hoisted. In the event all six races were completed in each fleet with the final Standard Rig race started not far inside the 15.30 time limit – so both days were long ones on the water.
The results are under the Results tab on the site and are linked in the list below. If you are interested the fleet results are here. Note that the event is not scored by fleet and naturally places within the age divisions can (for better or worse) be different in the fleet to the official results.
There were 14 cubes awarded unfortunately none in the Apprentice Masters in either Radial or Standard as there were not the required 5 entries in either. Cube winners were:
- Vanessa Dudley Women
- Martin Brady 4.7
- Rob Lowndes Radial GGM
- Kevin Phillips Radial GGM
- Adam French Radial GM
- Vanessa Dudley Radial GM
- Richard Longbottom Radial GM
- David Early Radial Master
- Roger Winton (from NZ) Radial Master
- Mark Bethwaite Standard GM
- Jeff Loosemore Standard GM
- Sean Atherton Standard Master
- Chris Dawson Standard Master
- Stuart Holdsworth Standard Master
