ith just a handful of boats left at sea, Noel Cornish’s St Jude has won the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s 180 nautical mile Cabbage Tree Island Race – the big leveller before the Rolex Sydney Hobart in December – taking out IRC, ORCi and PHS overall.
Just five boats remained at sea at 8am this morning, none in a position push Cornish out, so provisionally, his Sydney 47 takes the title from boat of the moment, Ichi Ban (Matt Allen), after a strong southerly slowly faded from late yesterday afternoon, throughout the night and into this morning and oscillating round the compass.
Those left on the race course are currently struggling to get 1 knot of speed out of their boats.
Cornish, the Vice Commodore of the CYCA, has enjoyed success over the last two seasons, but has been hunting a big win, and it finally came. St Jude was lucky enough to get into the Harbour before the breeze shut down. Yes, lucky – six feet longer than her main rivals made all the difference.
One can feel the pain of the 40 footers, the likes of Carl Crafoord’s Sail Exchange and Mark Gorbatov’s Blink, which were sitting in the top three with St Jude for the last half of the race, until the breeze dropped out and oscillated when Sai Exchange was just .
Other 40 footers that were looking good too, Zoe Taylor’s Grace O’Malley and Anthony Kirke’s Enterprise from WA (she is best placed of the 40s in seventh), were unlucky too, dropping down the board. It meant the TP52s moved back up. That’s sailing.
Ichi Ban moved into second, with Andy Kearnan/Peter Wrigley’s Koa third, Sam Haynes’ Celestial fourth and Tony Kirby’s Ker 46, Patrice fifth. Koa is a boat to watch for the Hobart, she is sailing well.
Barring any protests, this is how results will stand.
