First Winter Race at Derwent Sailing Squadron
by Peter Campbell & Peter Watson 23 Jun 11:22 BST
23 June 2019
Farr 40s running down the Derwent in the DSS winter race today. © Peter Watson
The high-performance Farr 40s are back racing as a fleet on the river, with five of the big boats entered in the Derwent Sailing Squadron/Battery World Winter Series which opened today.
For the first time in several years, the Farr 40s had their own class and today they enjoyed extremely close and competitive racing with the first three boats swapping the lead throughout the Sunday morning race.
Race officer Neil Harris sent the Farr 40s to the B1 mark and then to the permanent Garrow Light, allowing the big sloops to 'stretch their legs' and generate plenty of momentum in the light breeze.
Sydney Hobart entrant, 2Unlimited (Greg Prescott) took the honours in the end from Guilty Pleasures VI (Lewis and Cripps) and Peregrine (David Stephenson).
Also racing was Graeme Wood's Kirribilli, recently relocated from Sydney with Wood on the helm.
Competition can only get better with the scratch boat Wargames (Wayne Banks-Smith) due to join the fleet for race two of the DSS Winter Series on 14 July.
"If there is such a phenonium as the perfect winter race day, then today would have to be included...sunny skies, light katabatic northerly breeze and superb racing," commented DSS sailing operations manager Peter Watson.
While the Farr 40s in Division 1 raced their longer course, Divisions 2 and 3 enjoyed competitive racing with windward/leeward courses between Castray and Nutgrove.
Steve Harrison's sports boat Temptation scored a narrow win on corrected time in Division 2, with line honours winner Winstead Wines (Neil Snare) second and Wildfire (Team Wildfire) third.
Will Justo's Groove had an outright win in Division 3, taking first place on handicap from Motley (Stephan Lubach) and Serenity (Graham Hall).