Northerner wins the 2007 Compass Regatta
One of the oldest boats on the Compass Yacht Group's Register, Anna (ex Candida) won the 7th Compass Regatta getting its name on the Don Lees Shield at last.
It was a strong fleet of 13 Compass' of all ages and crew experience that crossed the line in Watsons Bay reaching for Manly West, beating to Manly East then a long reach to Neilsen Park. The last two legs were a run to Chowder Bay with a beat back to the finish in Watsons Bay.
The leaders quickly separated from the main body keeping well east across the Heads. Those who race infrequently, remained in a body until the Heads when they started to separate. Foul bottoms took their toll on the cruisers while the leaders rounded Manly West. Anna of Rushcutters Bay and Pumpkin of Botany Bay had a hard tussle while Jim in Pumpkin used all his Sailability training to steer with his new hip joint. Saltair of Watsons Bay, Lillian of Longueville and Hellangone of Woodford Bay made up the leading 28' fleet with 8 minutes and 5 seconds separating the leaders.
Coming up gracefully behind them were the stately Compass 29s led by Quando who took out first for that division. The 29s were well represented this year with five of the thirteen boats racing. There is always an argument on whether the C28 is faster than the C29 and it was interesting to observe that Quando was 4 minutes behind her usual rival Lillian and nine minutes behind Anna.
The whole weekend was a great event, starting with a BBQ on Friday night at Vaucluse Yacht Club where we enjoyed each other's company and a million dollar sunset over the city. Many yachts stayed on Club moorings overnight with Kareela C29 coming in from Botany Bay at 1.15am. Our oldest crew were the two Dons at 80+ and 60++ on Hellangone.
After the presentation of prizes to all competitors and the Don Lees Shield jointly to Anna and Quando for six months each, Don had a quiet word. He must be proud of the rich legacy he gave to Australian yachting in the 60's, 70s and 80s building around a 1000 yachts, the majority of which are still afloat. He met many original owners of the 25 or so that took part in the weekend's events. It was great that he had come down from Brisbane just to join us.
Our final event was the raft-up in Sugarloaf Bay, the poor bridge-keeper could be forgiven for thinking the same yachts were looping around the Spit! It was a wonderful evening celebrating with unpretentious people on unpretentious family boats. We even had Emma there. She came to the first Regatta of the modern era, in-utero and is now six.
Don said last year in wonder "I don't know how you do it, you're getting more boats along than when I paid for the Regattas!" With over 250 boats on our Register we are a strong group, sharing the problems of maintaining boats that have been out of production for well over 25 years.
Geoff Raebel