Mordialloc Motor Yacht Club

For this years final event of the Winter series held yesterday, we had six yachts hit the water.  But by the start of the race we had only four yachts compete.

The day was sunny and cool with very brisk northerly blowing, stirring up a nasty choppy sea. The course we sailed was a beat out to the mussel culture in Beaumaris Bay followed by a downwind run out to the No 1 buoy and then a close haul reach back to the pier. With conditions as they were, the four boats completed the course in just over an hour.

Line honours went to Peter Sutton in Ruff Cut and then about five minutes or so later the other three boats finished very close together, these being Solitaire, Silver Cloud and Delta Lady. Coming up to the line in second place Silver Cloud went to wrong side of the marker buoy - the crew scrambled to recover and put in a 360 degree to line up for the finish.  At the time Solitaire was close on Sliver Cloud's heels and was able to take advantage of the mistake to sneak through for second across the line.  Also Delta Lady made up ground to be close behind in fourth. All up it was a terrific morning's fast and furious sailing.

The other two boats that went out to race but didn't start were Veterans Affair and Pelican. The crew on Veterans Affair decided that the conditions didn't really suit the Castle 650, so they headed back into dock before the start of the race. Prior to the start the in the wild conditions, the crew aboard Pelican had some rigging problems. To fix these the boat went downwind, however by the time they had things sorted the boat was half way to Carrum!  So in order to start the race, John and Mario had a tough job beating back to the line.  This took almost an hour and as such John pulled the pin on starting.  

Then as they prepared to come back they found that they had motor trouble. Via a network of phonecalls they managed to get hold of Graeme Hebbard who came to the rescue in Samantha and towed them in. Graeme managed to get a couple of the crew (Derek and Kim) from Veterans Affairs on board to help with the tow. The Pelican Crew were much relieved to get back to the mooring after a drama packed morning.  Thanks to Graeme and his pick up crew, a potentially disastrous incident was avoided.

Check the reults here.