Race Report - Saturday 22 November 2025

Spring Point Score, Races 9 & 10

PRO Andrew Cox reports:

There’s nothing like a tricky easterly to open up the field in a sailing race on Sydney Harbour.

The breeze flicked capriciously from left to right and back again throughout the afternoon, putting the race management team through their paces. After resisting over-rotation of the course to the left during a pre-race rain squall, the score was 1-0 to the race management team. But the breeze had the last laugh (as it tends to do) when a massive right shift rendered the last beat or two of the second race somewhat over-skewed the other way.

The ILCA 6s and 4s did not disappoint, with the requisite general recall required in each race before a well-behaved black flag restart each time. The ILCA 7s maintained more appropriate decorum – as expected from a generally older, certainly larger, and debatably wiser cohort – with the notable exception of the only two younger sailors in that fleet on the day, both of whom were OCS and interestingly proceeded to come first and last in the first race (but for their DSQ).

Pat Levy was overheard before racing explaining our impressive anchor loss rate of one-per-week that had occurred over the prior two weeks, while proudly displaying to a small group of onlookers a full quiver of three gleaming new anchors – two replacements and one spare. Not wishing to see a spare anchor wasting away unutilised nor to be responsible for a broken streak, the race management team was relieved to observe the wing mark sans anchor drifting in the first race. Sailors were later heard in the change rooms discussing how the variable-length reach format should be incorporated into the racing schedule once a month alongside the regular point scores and club championships.

Well done to all the sailors who participated in the shifty conditions. In the inimitable words of Mark Bethwaite AM, “it was a thinking-[person’s] breeze”. And the thinking-persons of the day, as awarded by the race management team, were in order of merit: #1 = Jason Wilkins (7s scratch: 1st, 1st; 7s handicap 1st, 1st), #2 = Zac Howell (6s scratch: 1st, 1st), #3 = Murray Stone (7s scratch: 3rd, 2nd), #4 = Mike Morris (6s handicap: 3rd, 2nd).

Handicap winners were: R9 ILCA 6 = Ian Tudball, Diana Chen, Mike Morris; R10 ICLA 6 = Chris Tattersall, Mike Morris, Tucker McKeon; R9 ILCA 7 = Jason Wilkins, Andrew Stigter, Murray Stone; R10 ILCA 7 = Jason Wilkins, Patrick Black, Conor Roche.  Special call-out to Harper Spacey who was the lone ILCA 4 on the day, mixing it up with the ILCA 6s and featuring at the pointy end after indicative yardstick application.

Thanks to the race management team of Andrew Cox, Alice Cox, Ben Byford, Kirk Marcolina, and Kerryn Smith. And to the canteen volunteers: Paul Adam, Shirley Roach, James Gosling, and Jack Rustuccia. And also to our handicapper, Geoff Boscoe.

All photos by Andrew Cox