Sailing News
Ginger Wins Australian Title
The comeback king and kid climbed
back from an almost insurmountable five
point deficit yesterday to deliver Ginger
a trifecta of Australian Championship
titles, decided on the finish order in the
last race.
Leslie Green, Ginger’s owner/driver, is
this evening the king of the comebacks
and, once again the MC38 class. His
young tactician David Chapman is the
kid who helped engineer a remarkable
fightback thanks to today’s two wins. The
rest was decided by how the cards fell in
a patchy race 10.
In front of a chasing spectator fleet on
Pittwater, Ginger, Howard Spencer’s Menace and John Bacon’s Dark Star wrapped
up their title pointscore first, second and
third overall respectively, each on 31
points, the epitome of one design racing.
Menace’s win and Dark Star surrendering its commanding fleet lead chasing a
vaporising breeze, then finishing behind
Ginger in sixth place completely rearranged the top order. Ginger went from
second to first, Menace went from fourth
to second and cruelly Dark Star went
from being on the verge of a second
national title to third.
“I’ve got the most fabulous crew,” Green
told the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club
crowd and MC38 crews, enjoying Harken’s end of regatta feast, having accepted McConaghy’s perpetual Australian
Championship trophy. “This is our third
time and I have a debt of gratitude to all
the boys on our boat.
“Former PM Paul Keating once said ‘this
was the sweetest victory of all’, for me
this was the sweetest. Now we’ve won
it three times in a row I don’t think it’s
unreasonable that we keep the trophy,”
he put to the room.
Like Ginger’s crewman with the broken
finger from an on board accident in
Friday’s heavy air, Chapman said he felt
“mentally fractured” by their comeback.
“We tried to stay in phase as much as we
could; sometimes we were behind the
eight ball. The great thing about asymmetric boats is when you are back in the
train you decide when to go, you pick
your moment.”
From five MC38 Australian
Championships, Chapman has been
on four winners, beating Ginger from
on board Voodoo Chile four years ago.
“We shanghaied him after that,” joked a
proud Green.
Second overall Australian champion
Menace (NZL) scratched out a mixed
series, tactician Will Tiller suggesting,
“We sailed like a pack of dogs from race
2; it was unbelievable we were in with a
chance to win, nothing went our way. We
practiced our tacks between race 9 and
10 and found that extra 10%. It was great
to see Leslie get it again, he’s a very popular winner.”
The crowd momentum was with Dark
Star in race 10, and then they watched
the fleet slowly close the gap and Bacon
and his crew split off from the fleet to
follow Menace. It turned out Menace
carried a private breeze with them to the
finish, leaving Dark Star out wide and
alone.
“We had to beat Ginger and it couldn’t
have gone worse for us,” Bacon recounted. “We followed Menace but didn’t get
the puff he got. That’s the way it goes,
that’s Pittwater in light air. We had opportunities all weekend, one better result
in one race and we could have won. We
are still wrapped to be up there on equal
points with the winner.”
To his tactician Cam Miles and his RPAYC
crew, the Australian MC38 class president
paid tribute.
Fourth by two points was Marcus Blackmore’s Hooligan (RPAYC).
On a tricky final day, Sunday February
7, 2016, PRO Steve Merrington and his
team managed to run four races in 6-10
knot swinging east to sou’east winds
with plenty of course adjustments and
even more holes on the track to fall
into. “It was a race officer’s nightmare,”
he offered. “We managed to run all but
one of the scheduled races over three
days and we watched superb racing.
There wouldn’t be a fleet that can pull
a spectator flotilla like the MC38s and
the RPAYC is delighted to host the class
again,” Merrington commented, scanning
the packed clubhouse.
Next stop for the MC38s is Middle
Harbour Yacht Club’s Sydney Harbour
Regatta, March 5-6, where the fleet will
race in its own division, then in April the
class begins a three-part season championship pointscore.
By Lisa Ratcliff
Photo by Bob Fowler