Another winter dazzler blessed the Hamilton Island Race Week fleet; sun, wind and whales to see out the first half of the annual Whitsunday series, August 18-25.

The Club Marine classic long and medium race for IRC division 1 and 2 was a 50 nautical mile race Wild Oats XI tidied up in 3 hours 44 minutes, giving them an average speed of 13.3 knots over the course to the north-west of Hamilton Island. Cool winter SSE tradewinds of 23 knots at the start down to 12 knots by mid-afternoon were well-managed by the diverse fleet of supermaxis and other keelboats, multihulls and trailables from around Australia and overseas.

Video link to Broadkast’s day three highlights   

All points of the compass were covered in today’s long and medium distance island courses, stretching as far north as Double Cone for IRC Division 1, Hamilton Island Division 1 and Multihull Racing.

Marcus Blackmore’s TP52 Hooligan is now only one point off Matt Allen’s TP52 Ichi Ban thanks to a corrected time scoop in race three. The calibre of the two 52 crews and the hot competition between the like-boats has the sailing media covering Race Week suitably impressed.

“It’s very close racing between us and Ichi Ban, it’s a case of who gets the start, who gets the first shift; in the light airs we have little bit of height on them, but as Mike Fletcher, our coach for some years said, ‘he who makes the least mistakes wins’,” Blackmore shared back at the dock as his team celebrated.

Amongst Hooligan’s star-studded crew is Laser gold medallist Tom Slingsby calling tactics and Spanish helmsman Rafa Trujillo, a silver medallist in the Finn Class in the 2004 Athens Olympics and an America’s Cup and Volvo Ocean Race sailor.

“He’d been living in New Zealand and the Australian Sailing Team, who we sponsor, managed to encourage him to come and live in Australia and coach the Finns for the next Olympic Games,” said Blackmore.

“I always steer the starts and I did the first windy legs today and Rafa does the rest. He’s a lovely bloke, he’s fantastic, we just don’t understand what he’s saying some of the time that’s all!”

By Lisa Ratcliff 

Photo credit: SaltyDingo Media, Broadkasts