R: Better Business ... about to smoke by YabbaDabba

 

L: Better Business ... gotta make that wing mark!

 

R: Stagecoach ... chasing down another Aussi

 

L: Stagecoach ... life is GOOD at the back of the bus

 

R: Better Business ... nice comfy 3rd rig ride

12-Foot Skiff Interdominions – Brisbane
Shaun Sheldrake Reports:

The travelling circus that is the 12-footer Interdominions headed to Brisbane this year with the vital support of P&O Nedlloyd.  We followed coach Hogg’s advice before going and got ourselves some jandals and plenty of sunscreen, packed our bags and headed to the airport – only to arrive and find out flight had been cancelled, but that’s another story!

The regatta followed traditional format with the travelling team arriving a couple of days early to allow some training time at the venue, an invitation race on the Saturday then into the 10 race series itself.  This year Steve and Neill brought the very well sorted Stagecoach in pretty much the same configuration as they’d used in Wellington the previous year, just a few tuning alterations had been made in the search of more speed.  Craig (cripple) Anderson stepped onto Better Business for the first time in 6 months after recovering from a blown Achilles, we’d also just picked up (on the way to the airport) a set of new jibs from Bretto in the search for more horsepower.

The racing out in Moreton Bay was fantastic!  There were 34 skiffs on the start line competing for Individual honours with 11 selected from Australia to compete against the 11 we’d sent across for the John Brooke Teams Trophy.  One of the benefits of a regatta sailed over a 9-day period; there will generally be a variety of conditions, this year was no exception.  We sailed 6 races using 3^rd rigs, 2 races using 5^th rigs and 2 races using 2^nd rigs, not forgetting hat it was never less that 30 degrees to boot!

So how did the WBBC lads do?  Pretty damn well we think, the Stagecoach team spent plenty of time near the front of the fleet with a 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th among their results to put them 9^th overall.  The Better Business team got through the regatta with ‘Cripple’ still intact, the first time we’d managed to do that in almost 2 years!  On the water we weren’t quite as consistent as we used to be, the best placing across the line (4^th) being exactly that – we’d crossed the start line ½ second early, bugger!  We had 4 results inside the top 10 and finished 13^th overall.

The race for the Teams and Individual honours came down to the last race of the regatta.  This is not an unusual situation for the Individual glory but was the closest result in the Teams event ever.  The local hero’s (Paul O’Malley Jones & Randal Fitzsimon – East Coast Pilling & Drilling) came through to grab victory by 1 point from the Guru (Tim Bartlett & Simon Ganley – Dimension Polyant Sailcloth).  This was the first time a Queenslander had ever won the Interdominions and the first time in 10 years it had been won by an Australia.

The Teams result; well we went into the last 2 races with a 22-point deficit and managed to pull back 18 points of that in race 9.  Thankfully we also won race 10 by 20 point margin, creating a score of:

Australia 1336.5
New Zealand 1352.5

So the Australians are getting closer but the John Brooke Teams Trophy resides in New Zealand for another year!