Seawind Catamarans have a long history of facilitating a range of owners’ get togethers all over the world. The Moreton Bay (Brisbane Queensland) regatta has been operating for a number of years, and has moved around the bay exploring different racing and cruising and, most importantly, partying locations over that time.
For the last two years the event has been based out of the Wynnum Manly Yacht Club in Manly, Queensland. This year 2014 saw 15 boats attend the event, about par for the course for numbers, ranging from early model 1000’s to the latest 1250. The format for the event is a fun sail on Friday afternoon, for those that can make it, followed by a barbie at the club that evening. This year we had the very great pleasure of a presentation from David and Georgina off Seawind 1160, Nimrod, concerning their trip to the Louisiades. As well as undertaking an interesting trip David and ‘George’ are excellent and quite naturally talented presenters and had the audience enthralled with stories and vision from their trip. For most cruising cat owners, this is what owning the boat is all about and people sharing their experiences helps others plan for their voyages. Indeed, the use of blogs by owners to document trips is a great resource and Australian Seawind (and Outremer, Corsair and Aquila agents) Multihull Central is about to launch a new component of their website drawing together a link library of these resources to help inform other owners and possible buyers as to the capabilities and experiences of thevarious boats.
Saturday was forecast for strong winds but we were very fortunate to get great sailing conditions with plenty of breeze, but not too much, for race one. The format of the races is a staggered (not handicap) start which sees boats departing at one minute intervals. The overall elapsed times are then fed into a length/sail area/displacement formula togain a corrected time and identify race positions.
Race one was a delightful sail with boats covering the 12 mile course in beating, reaching and running legs. As usual the hard charging Talisker (Seawind 1160) and Black Diamond (Seawind 1000XL) were the two boats to catch. Catherine Mary (Seawind 1000), being single handed by Tim Maddern was another stand out performer. Sadly two boats didn’t make it to the start, Folie Douce (Seawind XL2) fell foul of a very low tide when leaving Raby Bay, and Keswick Pearl (Seawind XL2) stood by to await and assist getting them off the shallows. For their kind and thoughtful actions Peter andLeanne off Keswick Pearl received a sportsmanship award at the Saturday night presentation. Lunch was taken as a raft up in the lee of Green Islandand preparationswere made for the second race. All the time the wind was increasing so a decision was made to mandate at least a first reef. The conditions howeverdeteriorated to the point that even though a few boats had started the race was called off. As is fairly typical neither Talisker or Black Diamond were prepared to suggest calling the race unless the other one agreed. So the decision was made for them!
Back to the Wynnum Manly Yacht Club for a presentation dinner on the Saturday evening where the results were announced, rum was drunk and music was played. A high point of the evening is the fireworks display that is put on for the Manly Village festival that weekend with which the regatta coincides. Sunday saw some of the fleet off into the southern bay for a lunch cruise and some other boats returning to theirnorthern home base. It was a wonderful weekend of fun, friendship and goodnatured rivalry and a great experience for some of the newer owners. The2015 regatta will follow a similar format with the option of long distance race to be added into the Friday.
After the application of the secret handicapping formula, the overall results were:
First : Talisker (Seawind 1160) –
Prodder supplied by All Yacht Spars
Second : Black Diamond (Seawind
1000XL) – Boat Lift, wash and stand
supplied by Boatworks at Coomera
Third : Scarlett (Seawind 1160) – $250
voucher from Nautilus Marine Insurance
Scarlett beat Catherine Mary on corrected time by four seconds which was a credit to Tim, the skipper. For his efforts Tim was also awarded a $250 voucher from Nautilus Marine Insurance. The Moreton Bay Rally has a tradition of awarding a prize to every boat in keeping with the fun approach of these events. This can only happen with the assistance of sponsors and again this year we had wonderful support from our partners. Marine Innovations, the Australian Distributors of the Mantus Anchor supplied one of their exciting new anchors and this was awarded asa ‘lucky door prize’. Talisker managed to clean up that prize as well so allin all Alan and crew had a wonderful weekend.
Other supporters were Multihull Central who supplied a Hot Knife, some grab bags and boat tools as prizes as well as 40m of Double Braid to every entrant, Malcolm Betts from ICEER Refrigeration who has a tradition ofsupplying the bottles of rum, Craig Humphries from Signature YachtServices who supplied some really innovative dock lines that are super strong, light and with great elasticity. Multihull World magazine supported the event with magazine subscriptions for place getters and magazines and calendars for each entrant. In addition the the vouchers Nautilas Insurance also supplied a range of caps, bags and gloves for each entrant. Andrew Turner from Ullman Sails in Brisbane also was strong in his support of the event with bags and T-shirts. It’s wonderful that even the boats who didn’t make it to the start were still able to join in the celebrations and receive a prize. But, the biggest prize for all the owners is the camaraderie, and friendship that develops out of bringing people together who share a common passion.
