A stiff southerly turned Race 2 of the Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore into a proper shakedown, and when the fleet finally limped home from Flinders Islet, the double-handers had claimed the podium outright.
It's the first time in the Pointscore's history that the entire IRC Overall podium has been made up of two-handed crews. Jules Hall and Jan Scholten's J/99 Disko Trooper took the win, with Andy Offord and Stephen Prince's Borderline second and Chris O'Neill's Blue Planet third.
Not every boat made it round in one piece. Tenacity retired due to a crew injury, and the double-handed J/99 Jupiter pulled out with gear failure. Aaron Zhou's Marguerite brought up the rear, crossing the line at 1:42am on Sunday morning, well after most of the fleet had called it a night.
Disko Trooper, Borderline and Blue Planet filled the podium across five divisions: IRC Overall, PHS, IRC Corinthian, Double-Handed IRC and Double-Handed PHS.
For Hall, the forecast delivered almost exactly what was promised, right down to the punishing detail.
"We got exactly the forecast we thought we were going to get," he said. "The leg down was champagne sailing all the way. It got quite windy actually. The log files recorded a gust of 32 knots on the way down."
Then came the rounding at Flinders Islet. Soft, tricky, deceptive.
"We came out on port tack and after about 20 minutes to half an hour I saw this line of breeze. It just smashed into us at 40 knots," Hall said. "It lasted about five minutes, went really calm, and then it came in from the south-west and just built and built."
Wind on the return leg sat between 30 and 38 knots, gusting to a recorded peak of 49.6 knots, with Disko Trooper hitting a top speed of 23.8 knots.
"Which is a bit too fast for a J/99," Hall admitted.
Borderline wasn't finished either. The SunFast 3300 came storming home past Cronulla on a two-sail reach, closing hard on the leaders in the final stretch.
"But this race was great fun. It was a really good race. Every part of my body hurts today though," Hall joked.
Amid all that carnage, Ron Forster and Phil Damp's Beneteau First 40 Ariel was the first fully crewed boat home on corrected time, finishing fourth. It was proof that a well-sailed cruiser-racer can still mix it with the specialists when the breeze is up.
Line honours went to Rob Appleyard's Moneypenny, over the line at 7:03:08pm in an elapsed time of 9 hours 3 minutes 8 seconds. Seb Bohm's TP52 Smuggler followed at 7:48:46pm, in 9 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds.
Then things got tight. Lee Hawksley's TP52 Gusto crossed third at 8:05:37pm, in 10 hours 5 minutes 37 seconds, just 29 seconds ahead of Sean Langman's GP42 Back 2 Black at 8:06:06pm, with Richard Harris's Cookson 50 Sticky arriving two minutes later at 8:08:08pm. Back 2 Black was first of the 40-footers home, a strong result against much larger boats in tough conditions.
Among the IRC Class 40s, Elizabeth Tucker and Angus Clarke's First Light made the best of the southerly to finish 20th overall, ahead of Yeah Baby Boatec Australia in 24th and Vixen Racing in 26th. Le Tiroflan, a Pogo 40, also raced but was entered in PHS only.
Covering 260 nautical miles, the race sees competitors head out of Sydney Harbour and turn south towards the Tollgate Islands, a rocky diving spot four nautical miles off Batemans Bay, before the fleet turns back for Sydney Harbour. Conditions on Saturday made sure nobody found it an easy run.
