2012 King Island Race - Morning Update.
The wind and swell was, as predicted, from the SW as boats went over the start line off Queenscliff early this morning. While the majority of the fleet are heading west tracking out into Bass Strait, Gusto and Cadibuura 8 have adopted a different strategy and are hugging the shoreline in the early stages of the race.
Of the 24 boats in the race 20 are still making their way south. The Secretary, despite having seven batteries onboard, experienced power failure and did not start the race. They were forced to pull into Blairgowrie in the dark in the wee small hours of the morning. This will be disappointing for George Shaw, skipper of The Secretary and past ORCV Commodore who is a regular competitor in this race.
Slinky Malinky and Fantasy of Man - two of the three boats who are racing shorthanded with only 2 crew onboard - have retired around 0900hrs with sea sickness in the sloppy conditions. Cadibarra 8 is also doublehanding and is still in the race.
At 0915 the lead group of boats included Calm, Goldfinger, Scarlet Runner and Gusto.
Calm is in the lead position for line honours and is nearly 3 nautical miles ahead of Scarlett Runner, closely followed by Goldfinger.
The battle between the two forty foot Beneteau’s, Dry White and Halcyon, is pretty much on a par.
Calm has 69.8 nautical miles to go and is doing 6.6 knots so at this stage of the race it will be around ten hours before they will be expected to reach the finish line.
1100hr update: Given the very light winds and sloppy seas, Dark and Stormy determined that they will not have enough time to finish and have decided to retire from the race . So now there are 20 boats en route to Grassy.
This is a picture of Calm flying along with a huge white spinaker in the SYC Open Day this year. One thing for sure - they won't have their kite up in the current conditions.
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