Balmain (Henry Larkings, Tom Grimes and Fynn Sprott) won Race 3 of the Australian 18 Footers League’s Club Championship on Sydney Harbour today, but it was Sixt, crewed by Jacob Marks, Alex Marinelli and Matt Doyle which won the 2025 SIXT Spring Championship, and Yandoo Trophy.
The Balmain team combined great crew work with excellent tactics in the testing, tricky and light ENE breeze to take the line honours associated with the Club Championship by 58 seconds from the young rookie Rag & Famish Hotel crew of Ben Crafoord, Ryan Ewings and Max Nearn, with Smeg (Ash Rooklyn, Niall Morrow and Finn Rodowicz) a further 23 seconds back in third place.
The major event of the day’s racing was Race 6 of the SIXT Spring Championship, a handicap held in conjunction with the scratch race. While Smeg won Race 6 from Fisher & Paykel (Brett Van Munster, Tom Quigley and Logan Radford), the overall Spring Championship victory, and $6,000 prizemoney, went to the Sixt team which finished with 22 points after finishing in 7th place today.
Runner-up, and winner of $1,200 prizemoney, was Club Marine (Emma Rankin, Jed Cruikshank and Brandon Buyink) on 26 points, while third place, and prizemoney of $600, was won by Rag & Famish Hotel on 32 points.
Fisher & Paykel finished fourth on 33 points, followed by Balmain on 35 and Yandoo on 37.
Following today’s Balmain victory in the Club Championship race, Lazarus Capital Partners (Tom Cunich, Marc Chapon and Tim Westwood) leads the overall pointscore with a total of 10 points from one 2nd placing and two 4ths from the three races sailed so far. Yandoo (Tom Needham, Fang Warren and Pete Nicholson) couldn’t recover from a poor first work to the Beashel Buoy and finished only 11th today but is still in second place on 13 points following wins in each of the first two races of the championship.
Sixt is in third place on 14 points, followed by Rag & Famish Hotel on 18, Balmain on 21. Fisher & Paykel and Club Marine are next, equal on 24 points.
After a number of strong winds early in the season which created problems for some of the new and young teams, today’s better sailing conditions allowed those teams to show their potential, providing a good lead-up for them to the NSW Championship which begins next Sunday with Races 1 and 2 being conducted by the Australian 18 Footers League on Sydney Harbour.
The light, flukey conditions at the start played havoc with the fleet which split into two groups soon after launch. Both Rag & Famish Hotel and Sotheby’s Ballard Property (Bec Hancock) held leads on the LHS of the course before Shaw and Partners Financial Services (John Harris) took the lead from Balmain when the two groups finally met off Steel Point.
At the weather mark, Shaw and Partners held a 30-second lead over Balmain, followed by Smeg, Club Marine, Lazarus and Sotheby’s Ballard Property, but a spinnaker problem on the leader proved costly, then nearly fatal on the run from the Beashel Buoy to the wing mark off the southern end of Shark Island. The issue arose from the wrong spinnaker being taken to the start area which had to be quickly replaced with the larger #1 spinnaker.
With Shaw and Partners relegated back to fourth place, Balmain’s crew quickly established a one-minute break over their nearest rival, Smeg, at the end of the first lap, and despite relentless challenges by Smeg and The Rag over the following two laps of the long NE course, Balmain’s victory was never in doubt, finishing 58 seconds ahead.
Today’s race result sheet and series point scores for both the SIXT Spring Championship and Club Championship, along with SailMedia images from the racing, are attached. Races 1 and 2 of the NSW Championship will be sailed next Sunday (23 November). Races 4 and 5 of the Club Championship will be sailed in conjunction with the NSW Championship races. The spectator ferry will leave Double Bay Public Wharf at 2pm, and SailMedia will livestream the racing.
#Sailing #18Footers #SydneyHarbour #SailingNews #SIXTSpringChampionship #ClubChampionship #NSWChampionship
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