ORCV Melbourne to King Island (M2KI as part of the MMOC)

Just make mine Black!

All rightey then.

As M2KI approaches - it's on 06/03/10 - let's see who's aiming to get their hands on the Black! The Black is of course the über-cool McConaghy carbon fibre steering wheel, which is the prize in the 2009/10 McConaghy Melbourne Offshore Championship. It is being awarded in the PHS Division, which is fantastic to see, as this is quite a departure from the norm, where the boats at the front usually get the accolades!

Here's the wheel in question.

Here's what you could look like with it - pic © Christophe Laumay.

Here's the flag you win for each race. All it might take is two of these and the wheel could be yours!!!

Here's the sticker to show you're part of it all. These should be on your boom, so if they're not, please get 'em on!

M2S Winner, 'Pretty Woman', pictured here rounding the top mark in last year's inaugural M2G.

M2L Winner was 'Caledonia', pictured here with her owner, the very cheery, Malcolm Mitchell.

M2HE Winner - 'Ingenue' - why hang on to Stainless, when there's carbon up for grabs? This is Rosie Collahan aboard 'Ingenue' at the 2009 M2HE start. Pic © Steb Fisher.

M2HW Winner - 'Jazz Player' - pic © Steb Fisher

M2KI Winner - ?

M2PF Winner - ?

M2AB Winner - ?

MMOC Overall Winner - you get the picture...

There are no Cafes at sea, but if you win this gem, you can take your strong Black with you (Captain Raw would love that, I tell you).

By John Curnow

ORCV Melbourne to King Island (M2KI as part of the MMOC)

Guilty!

Many thanks to our newly crowned, Happiest Crew on the Water, 'Audacious'. You can read about that event HERE. Anyway, as I sat down to gnocchi with prawns and chorizo in a white wine sauce, with enough white wine left for the chef and Holly, I got this email from Greg Clinnick about their weight. Talk about making me feel guilty... They were sitting down to Lite n' Easy, fruit salad with a side order of a run at the end.

OK - It's time to play our new game, called Collective Nouns, which started HERE. This image is of the Sydney 38's parked in a row at Geelong. I'm going with Squad of 38s, derived from the US Police, who love the Colt 38 Special. Any advances??????????????????

Reflecting upon their version of Audi Victoria Week, Greg says After a shaky start, our good crew work and aggressive tacking and helming started to pay off with a 3rd place in race 4 and a dead heat for 4th place in the last race in 20+ knot testing conditions. We enjoyed holding out 'Challenge' (and why wouldn't they, eh Dennis?) in the passage race, with them nipping at our heels for a good hour and a half down the Corio Channel. Overall we finished 5th and just in the top half of the fleet - with two Interstate boats and a sprinkling of World Champs, National Champs and professional sailors, 5th was a good solid result. We can take plenty of positives forward into our National Titles, which are on soon.

The Audacious Conspiracy campaign is now in full swing. We leave Melbourne on Wednesday the 10th of February to truck all of our sails and gear up to Pittwater, which is just north of Sydney. For those who may have missed some of the earlier emails, we are chartering a Sydney 38 in Sydney called 'Conspiracy' and using all of our own gear, to sail her in the Sydney 38 Australian Championships, which are going to be held over three days, starting on Friday, February 12. This will be a real test of how we are progressing and will toughen us up for the Victorian Titles, which are going to be run in April of this year.

Last Saturday KD (Ken Dog, who is our tactician) and I went up to Sydney to race on Conspiracy and test out the boat we will be using. Whilst a little older than 'Audacious', she seemed fast enough and our conclusion was that with our newer, faster sails and some sharp crew work, we will have a boat that will be competitive in the regatta. We will now add our own little improvements: like marking the halyards, mast, backstay, and car positions to be able to find our settings quickly and then lighten the boat by removing everything except what the rules require us to carry. Finally we'll scrub the bottom, re-tune the mast, slacken the lower life lines to allow harder hiking, clean the bilges and we are pretty much into it!

Now. With a week and half to go, we pulled out the scales and weighed the crew. We have been dieting since Geelong, in order to get down to the class requirement, which is a combined maximum crew weight of 750kgs or just 83 kgs each on average for 9 crew (Ed - bet Nicky and Katy are smiling right now). We only realised yesterday that the scales are actually reading a couple of kilos light. As a result, we now know that we are about 20 kgs over the limit! If we cannot get down to 750 kgs, someone will have to step off the boat, which would be a disaster for the individual and a disaster for our campaign (Ed - and oh so hard for the Skipper to tap them on the shoulder!!!!!!!!!!!). So the diet is on in earnest (Ed - I'm really going to resist an Oscar Wilde reference - really), as we need to cut the kilos quickly. We are all on strict diets, off the grog and exercising when we can. The official weigh in isn't until 5pm, the day before racing starts and this will mean little, if any, food on that day, until we have been passed as legal. A sauna session and running up the hill in wet weather gear are the fall back position of the day.

So you will see the Audacious crew eating Lite N Easy, fruit salad, lettuce and drinking lots of water over the next 10 days.

Good luck team - you'll be ready for a nice, fattening Ocean Race, to the land of senstaional steak sandwiches and awesome crays when you return. Did I mention CHEESE? No. Well I was too busy stuffing my face. King Island does wicked cheese and the factory is a tasters heaven... Don't forget the plastic bag raffle either. I was told that the steak sandiches were enough to even turn a vegetarian over for the weekend. Don't know and we are PC here at the ORCV. What I can tell you is that the onions definitely ARE tougher than the beef. So there you have it!

BTW - Geelong pics from Mikey their bowman, who is a Rock Band (...Weddings, Parties, Anything... and I can now hear everyone going Boom Boom - Basil Brush).

By John Curnow

ORCV Melbourne to King Island (M2KI)

Club Marine Series - Back on deck!

The Club Marine Series returns to Port Phillip, this Saturday. The Royal Brighton Yacht Club is hosting Day Four of the annual Yachting Victoria seven-day series. It is a great way to keep practicing before heading back out to sea with the M2KI on March 6.

Bags a plenty during the last Club Marine Series day. Pic © Steb Fisher

There are four divisions, all very hotly contested by members from the various clubs that surround the Bay. The Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, in Williamstown, is currently leading the club championship in both IRC and AMS.

There are 12 Grand Prix boats contesting the Division Zero race in the morning. They are joined for afternoon race on their course, by the 50 Division One boats, which start five minutes behind them.

Over on an adjacent course, the 54 boats of Divisions Two and 38 boats of Division Three, will have their race. All in all, 154 boats of all manner, shapes and sizes will be out, which makes for a sensational spectacle for anyone enjoying walks, BBQs and the many other seaside activities and those on the official boats.

'Calm' won the inaugural M2G last year, which is when this image was taken.

The current series leader for Div0 is 'Calm', from SYC. Fellow club boat, 'Challenge', leads Div1 in IRC. 'Executive Decision' is the AMS leader.

Lou Abrahams aboard his 'Challenge' - pic © Steb Fisher

'Challenge' - now doubt in the midst of winning a race on Port Phillip.

Div2 is lead at the moment by 'Surprise' in IRC and 'Godzilla' in AMS. Both of these boats are from the series club leader, RYCV, where as both of the leaders in Div3, 'Intrusion' and 'Rhiannon', are from SYC.

'Surprise' are always splashed throughout these pages - won their Div at AVW as well... Pic © Steb Fisher

Our previous Happiest Crew on the Water holders, 'Godzilla'.

The weather appears to be fair to solid, for now, but then at this time of year, that can vary. The Bureau of Meteorology states ‘Winds: South to southeasterly 15 to 20 knots tending east to southeasterly 20 to 25 knots during the late afternoon and evening. Seas: 0.5 to 1 metres increasing to 1 to 1.5 metres during the evening.’ In all likelihood, the fleet should be in their pens when things freshens up significantly. The Race Director of the day, Simon Dryden, feels that it “Should be delightful and provide for marvelous racing!”

So I guess we’ll be here on Saturday to find out. We trust all the crews are super-honed and recovered after their recent forays down at Geelong for Audi Victoria Week.

By John Curnow

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!!!

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

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.

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.

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