Melbourne to King Island (M2KI)
With great running conditions from the South East presenting themselves on a beautiful Sunday morning, it was important to get the presentations completed early and crews away, after a stellar M2KI for 2009.
As part of the ORCV rules now, if you're not there at the presentation, you don't get the prizes attached to your victories only the trophies at a later date. So as a result, the next race was to see who would collect the most bottles of ORCV wine. I'm pretty sure that particular prize went to ‘Ninety Seven' and then when their Sailing Master, Noel May, also won the Plastic Bag raffle (by the way, it came with a 4kg Crayfish as an added bonus), it did prompt him to ask if anyone wanted to make the homeward voyage with them, which was a pretty sure sign that they had really cleaned up!!!
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| A very chuffed and laden Laurie Ford from 'Spirit of Downunder' cannot complain about his handicap for a little while now.. |
However, Laurie Ford from ‘Spirit of Downunder’ started to look very weighed down with his extra wine and the 120m drum of Donaghys rope he won, so perhaps he got the greatest cash equivalent out of the weekend. ‘Isuzu Marine’ were happy to be getting their name on the perpetual shield and ‘Young Ones’, in their first ‘Paddock’ foray, got the PHC prize. Full results are available at: http://www.orcv.org.au/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=312
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| Great tastes, great value! |
The King Island Dairy show bags also got cleaned up and why not. At $40ea, 65 persons decided 5 cheeses, yoghurt, chocolate dessert and crackers were a bargain. There were no portions of KI beef left either, as all the multiple kilo vac-packs of Scotch and Eye Fillet joined the queue of cargo being ferried back out to the yachts. Many thanks to Carol and Ian from the KIBC for arranging these - I'm sure they'll disappear just as quickly next year.
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| You wanna do what to me?! - Pack says it all....... |
Without doubt however, the biggest clean up was the one performed by the local Authorities last week. Over 150 Pilot Whales are buried under Sea Elephant Bay beach at Naracoopa now. Thankfully they managed to get around 50 off and as you can see from the image, there is nary a sign of the disaster that greeted KI last Sunday night.
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| Sea Elephant Bay beach at Naracoopa as it was a few days ago and then as it is today... |
Without doubt however, the biggest clean up was the one performed by the local Authorities last week. Over 150 Pilot Whales are buried under Sea Elephant Bay beach at Naracoopa now. Thankfully they managed to get around 50 off and as you can see from the image, there is nary a sign of the disaster that greeted KI last Sunday night.
The fleet will be home by now, but based on the smiles and comments, an even larger field will make the grand voyage South next year.
By John Curnow
