8:41 AM Sat 27 Mar 2010 GMT
Defending champion club, the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, has a commanding lead after the first day of racing in the Association Cup inter-club regatta on Melbourne's Port Phillip.
While sailing conditions were good yesterday, wild weather has been forecast for Victoria today with two more races scheduled to be sailed.
The RYCV finished day one with 6 points, comfortably ahead of arch-rivals from across the bay, Sandringham Yacht Club, on 13 points, followed by Royal Brighton Yacht Club, 17 points, Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron, 20 points and Hobson's Bay Yacht Club, 21 points. The scoring is based on the two best scoring boats from each club in each of the four divisions, IRC A and B and AMS A and B.
The Williamstown-based RYCV set the pattern with Executive Decision (Grant Botica), Living Doll (Michael Hiatt) and Apache (Peter O'Driscoll) filling the first three places in the IRC A division of race 1. Support came from Wake (A Lidgett) and Swordfish Trombone ((Tim Olding) which placed second and third to the RMYS boat Silk (Ken Simpson) and the AMS A division.
Hobson's Bay Yacht Club yacht Ikon, steered by Kirwan Robb for owner Bruce McCracken, scored an upset win in race two for IRC A division. The previousweekend Robb had steered the Victorian yacht K2 to victory in the Australian championships for the Farr 30s in Sydney. Ikon won from Executive Decision and Living Doll.
Royal Brighton's Just a Minor Hickup (Peter Coleman) notched up a win in the second race for AMS A division, with the RYCV's Chutzpah (Bruce Taylor) and Wake filling the minor placings.
The RYCV consolidated its position in IRC B, with Surprise (D Ellis) winning both races and Footloose (John Robb) taking out both races in AMS B. Surprise won race one from the RMYS boat Salamander II (Chris Jones) and Top Gun (Max Peters, RYCV) and beat Salamander II and Sandringham's Watermark II (G Watt/P Loh) in race two.
Footloose won the first AMS division B race from Sandringham's Upbeat (Peter Dunne) and the RYCV's Serious Yahoo (Tony Spencer) while in race two the placegetters were Avanale (Philip Battey, RMYS) and Nouannie (T Stanford, RYCV).
by Peter Campbell
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