The St Helena Cup, described by the organisers as a champagne glass shaped course, was originally a teams race for monohulls and it was not surprising that a huge fleet (eighty or more) of those yachts assembled at the start line near Mud Island. There is also a multihull event that coincides with the monohull one and the twenty or so multis that gathered to await our start a half hour later watched the magnificent spectacle of the monos stretched out across the start line. Aboard Beats Workin’, our tacticians decided that the port end of the start-line was favoured. Surprisingly, only two other multis made that observation. Winds were of the order of ten knots for the start, a definite advantage for the large number of trailable multis out racing.

We could see that Raider and Boss Racing had made good starts but in the melee of weaving our way through all the competitors on starboard that’s about all we could discern. We settled down to trimming sails for the first leg up to a buoy to the west of the channel between Mud & St Helena, losing quite a lot of ground in the light conditions so that we were toward the tail of the fleet. Even ‘Silent Running’ was ahead of us as we rounded that mark and headed off toward Moreton Island; well more like North Straddie. Again, our tacticians voted to keep on the port tack as far out as we could, a brilliant move as most other vessels tacked to the north and we picked up a huge (30 degree) lift over the course of this beat. So we only needed a short starboard tack to reach the top mark. On this leg, we had a fantastic view of all the spinnakers going up and all the troubles that crews had controlling them. Boss Racing and Raider were already carving

through the big mono fleet. We don’t have a kite, one reason for our low OMR, but we found that by poling out our jib we didn’t lose much at all on the downwind leg. Whereas we could run very square and take the rhumb-line to the downwind mark, many others had to gybe downwind (and some on very acute angles to the wind). So as the fleet of trailable trimarans zigged and zagged across our bows we just trundled along sipping the first rum of the day. We also had time to sample the delicious salmon and ham sandwiches that Michelle had prepared for lunch.

Rounding the downwind mark, the wind had increased considerably and this favoured our nine-ton behemoth considerably. We were passing monos and even a few multis as we beat up toward the turning mark to take us back between the islands. Jim Fern’s ‘Jag’ seemed to be making heavy weather of it back at our end of the fleet, along with a couple of other C24s and Bob Forster’s ‘Wavelength’. We kept in close touch with all those boats right up to the finish line, losing a little during some of our less than professionally executed tacks. Many of our competitors remarked after the race about the noise we were making on the last few legs. Well, unfortunately, we had broken our leech line and there was nothing we could do to silence the jib’s leech from flogging. Fortunately, after we were back in harbour, skipper Alan produced a super new sail repair kit, unopened. And we had a super seamstress in the form of my wife Robyne who insisted on reading

the instructions as the rest of us celebrated our race with another rum or two before we attempted the repair.

Back at WMYC we were very pleased to discover that we had achieved a third place on OMR and our team-mate Akimbo had got a fourth. That gave our team (with Gordon Meyer’s Bare Essentials as our third member) an overall second spot for the day behind the Raider Silent Touch team (Raider, Silent Running and Touch Paper....).

Day 2; After a blissful sleep aboard the Seawind 1160 in Manly Harbour, I foolishly decided to go for a 4km run along the foreshore to clear my head. Robyne had already come back from her Sunday walk and Alan and Michelle took a leisurely stroll up to the bakery. A hearty breakfast from the chef’s BBQ on the stern of BW brought a bit more life into my weary body just as our other crew member joined us. Gerry was obviously fresh from his trip home to Tambourine Mt. So, packing away any thought of day 1, we readied ourselves for the next race, the (anti-clockwise) version of day 1’s. Again, we were close to the start line as the monos began their race and after watching their start, decided to run down the line from the starboard end as the multi fleet seemed somewhat depleted. With a better start than Saturday we held our position pretty well as far as the eastern side of Mud, indeed we were only marginally behind Trevor Dellitt’s ‘Touch

Paper...’ till about halfway up the beat on the long leg to the windward mark. However, as we threaded our way through the fleet starting to make its way back from that mark, our main-sheet parted company with the end of the boom, just as the wind began to gust up toward twenty knots. After a fairly lengthy struggle we managed to bring it all under control, re-attach the sheet and hoist sail again. The increased wind strength made tacking a lot more difficult so we lost even more ground against Touch Paper and the smaller trailables. Even more embarrassingly, we went into irons while trying to tack just after the finish line as the winner of Saturday’s monohull event, ‘Home’ was finishing just below us. A hasty use of the iron spinnakers averted disaster, but we were not happy with our performance. Well, at least we finished.

It was with some surprise then, that Alan Larkin relayed the news on Monday that we had actually managed a fifth place on OMR and our team had actually won the multi OMR teams event. Akimbo had sailed consistently at fourth place to anchor our victory. So we sure ain’t the fastest boat in the fleet but with the conservative sail geometry (& therefore low OMR) and careful helming (and a bit of luck) we managed a pretty creditable performance over the weekend. Congratulations to WMYC on a well-organised event.