Magnetic Island Race Week: entries close this Friday
Photo - Angus Fletcher's Trevake II in among the Performance fleet at the recent Airlie Beach Race Week. Credit - Tracey Johnstone
Entries for this year’s SeaLink Magnetic Island Race Week, being held from 28th August to 2nd September 2014, close this Friday, 22nd August.
Those skippers who enter their boat by Friday will still receive an entry in the draw to win two tickets to Auckland for the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in March 2015.
The fleet numbers to date are impressive with 54 monohulls and multihulls on the entry list for the six-day regatta. Racing is being conducted in IRC, Performance Racing, Cruising Spinnaker, Cruising Non Spinnaker, Multihull Racing and Multihull Cruising.
The most recent entry received is from the Victorian boat Tevake II, skippered by Angus Fletcher.
Originally Fletcher was planning to again campaign Tevake II in the Melbourne Vanuatu Race, but the program didn’t go ahead. “So we decided to bring the boat up to Queensland and do the Airlie Beach and Magnetic Island race weeks, and do a bit of cruising in between,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher cruised his Radford 13m up from Melbourne to the Whitsundays and then competed in the Airlie Beach Race Week Performance Division 2 where he finished sixth on a count-back to the Townsville Yacht Club boat Boadicca.
He is currently taking the long way from Airlie Beach to Magnetic Island, using the time between the two race weeks to cruise his boat out to the Barrier Reef. He is then looking forward to a gentler pace of competition in the Cruising Spinnaker Division at Magnetic Island. “We’re also not particularly keen on the short windward/leeward races. We much prefer to get out in the longer races.
“We will be sailing short-handed. The crew are coming from Victoria, but I don’t know how many will turn up which is another reason the longer races will be better for us,” Fletcher added.
After Race Week he will start the process of making his way south taking Tevake II as far as Sydney in time for the team to compete in the 70th Sydney Hobart Race.
The Notice of Race and the online entry is at www.magneticislandraceweek.com.au. Entries close Friday 22nd August 2014.
Wamberal, NSW
