Team Lexar wins Jane Tate Memorial Award

Team Lexar wins prestigious Jane Tate Memorial Award in the 60th Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race © Team Lexar

Team Lexar wins prestigious Jane Tate Memorial Award in the 60th Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race

And navigator proposes to skipper!

With 55 of the fleet retired after three days at sea, the 2004 60th anniversary Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht race was the toughest for several years. For an amateur crew to even finish is an achievement in itself, but Team Lexar, sponsored by Lexar, leading manufacturer of flash memory cards for digital cameras, not only held their own with some of the world's top sailors, they also won the Jane Taite Memorial Award as the highest placed boat skippered by a woman.

Skippered by Jakki Moores, Team Lexar is a group of friends who wanted to compete in the race together so badly, they chartered their own boat and secured Lexar's support. Although this was Jakki's third Hobart, it was the first time she had skippered a boat in the race.

Team Lexar crossed the finish line off Hobart’s Castray Esplanade in the afternoon on Friday 31 December 2004 having taken 5 days, 37 minutes and 18 seconds to complete the gruelling race.

Enduring stormy conditions that saw waves up to 12 metres high, the proud skipper says that everyone involved played a part in the team’s success. "I’m so proud to have had the opportunity to skipper Team Lexar- a great crew, all with a passion for sailing and ambition to compete in the Sydney to Hobart,” said Moores.

“Together we made our dream a reality. It was a real slog, but with an outstanding crew and the support from our sponsor Lexar, everyone did their bit to see us through.”

Proud sponsors

Lexar’s sponsorship of the boat gave the leading digital media and accessories company the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of its 80X Professional CompactFlash memory card range, with Moores acting as team photographer as well as skipper and using Lexar’s range of professional flash card and photographic products.

"The Sydney to Hobart race is the perfect environment to demonstrate the advantages of Lexar’s professional flash card range, which has an excellent reputation amongst the professional photography market for reliability and high performance in extreme environments, so our products were ideal for this scenario" said Steve Marriot, Lexar Senior Marketing Manager EMEA.

“Jakki was not only skipper, but also Team Lexar photographer. Due to the notoriously difficult and rapidly changing conditions of the Sydney to Hobart race, Jakki needed hassle-free and high performing products to allow her to get the shots she wanted.”

Throughout the race JMoores used a Lexar 80X Professional CompactFlash® memory card to capture images on her Nikon D70 digital camera. Lexar’s 80X memory cards are capable of sustained write speeds of 12MB per second and have the added advantage of Write Acceleration technology, which can improve write performance in WA enabled cameras by up to 23 per cent against standard professional cards.

Moores also sampled some pre-production samples of Lexar ActiveMemory System CompactFlash cards – the latest innovation from Lexar that will be available locally early this year. The Active Memory System (AMS) allows photographers to load information, profiles and captions onto the memory card prior to its use, so that when the card is full it can be loaded into an AMS card reader connected to a PC or Mac, and all of the data will be automatically applied to every image while it is being downloaded.

“The Sydney to Hobart is one of the most exciting yacht races anywhere in the world and we were delighted to be on board with Team Lexar in 2004,” Steve Marriott. “We are very proud of the fantastic result achieved and would like to congratulate the entire crew for their hard work and dedication in getting across the line.”

Romance at sea

As if there wasn't enough excitement on board, Jakki's partner, Team Lexar's navigator Henry Ayres, proposed to her.

"I was going to wait until we had finished the race," said Ayres from Witney in Oxfordshire, "but when I realised that we needed to reduce sail and hoist just our storm gear to cope with the conditions, I thought I'd better get on with it! Thankfully she said yes."

Jakki collected the Jane Tate Memorial Award at the awards ceremony on New Year's Day and received a resounding reception from some of the world's most seasoned sailors.

The best reward though is probably the reaction of her crew who said they'd be back again next year so long as Jakki is at the helm.