It was Doyle Sails one, two, three, with Doyle-powered yachts taking out the podium positions at the Brisbane to Hamilton Island Race this weekend, run by the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron as a feeder event to the Whitsunday racing season.
First on IRC was Duncan Hine’s “Alive” claiming the top spot, their elapsed time for the 546.8 nm course from Brisbane up the coast was an impressive 31 hours and 7 minutes.
Doyle Sails expert Justin Ferris was onboard the victorious RP66, “We set the tempo right from the start, correct end of the line with the correct sail setup, by the first mark we already had a sizable lead over the other 60 footers in the fleet. Existing the bay, we did a really good job again of selecting the correct sails, triple heading with JT, J3 and GS to the end of Frazer island gaining miles all the time on our fleet (Comanche and Rex were having their own battle), once at the end of Frazer Island and we were able to free up enough to set the A4 and we were really on our way,” said Ferris. “Alive lives for this type of sailing, 20-28TWS, VMG running suits the boat perfectly. We still had to keep the boat in one piece, it wasn’t the easiest of nights for driving and trimming the boat through the short, steep sea state but again this was well managed with dropping in the 1st reef in the squalls which we continued to do almost all the way to the finish.”
“Hard to beat a race which gives you such great downwind conditions, so many people have said to me over the years “ if only we could rip downwind for 24 hours and then get off” well this is this race. Great welcoming party met us at the dock with beers and the Yacht Club put on burgers, what more could you ask for.” comment Ferris.
The Alive team are now prepping the boat ahead of Airlie Beach Race Week starting this weekend and then next on their schedule will be Hamilton Island Race Week, where they will be joined by Doyle Sails expert Stu Bannatyne.
Andy Kearnan’s Doyle-powered TP52 “Koa” claimed second place for the IRC scored race,and the team had a decent battle downwind on the course with third place TP52 Matador, David Doherty’s Doyle-powered crew.
Kearnan and his team are following suit with Alive and will be getting some extra racing in at Airlie Beach before heading back across to Hamilton Island for Race week.
Matador has had a super sucessful season with inshore racing and will be looking for redemption when they line up against Koa again at Hamilton Island Race Week.
Full results are here// https://app.sailsys.com.au/club/25/results/series/2294/races/16780?handicap=44&division=5823
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