by Peter Hackett

The St Helena Cup this year was another great event, although changed from previous years by the new management at WMYC. OMR has been ditched leaving us with PCF only, and after years of building up the event and sponsoring our class, Phil Day was relegated to competitor status only. A new charter company, Robinson Cruises, was the sponsor of multihulls for this year’s event. Teams were also changed to two boats in each.

The new arrangements made the PCF all that more important, so I was glad to start with our own club numbers, then work with Phil on a good set of data for the event.

Saturday started early with a building northerly which hit 30 knots during the day for awesome rides, especially the legs in and out of the bay between the islands. A big fleet of monohulls provided the entertainment this year with chinese and every other form of gymnastic gybes on the run down the bay, some lovely samples of shredded kites, and a new event now in Sports Boats called “Let’s Stand On the Keel and Hope the Boat Comes Up Again”. It is interesting to note that these guys are now only using less than 100 kg in the keel, and would pass no self-righting test once down for the count. Joel Berg showed us all how much he enjoys a drag race by nailing the double from Drew Carruthers (PCF) on Rush Hour, Garry Scott sailed a great race on a little boat in those conditions to manage third on corrected time. Phil Day was pushing his boat hard and again demonstrated how to reef his favourite kite.

Sunday was 5 knots from the ESE which gave the little trimarans a better race. It was Gary Saxby’s turn on Boss Racing to take the line honours from Turning Point. Ian Jones attached himself to our transom from the start to the finish and smashed PCF in front of Ted Kerr on New Horizons, and Jim Fern on JAG.

Overall PCF honours went to a deserving Garry Scott from Rush Hour and then us on IntriIIgue, with the team event going to the CoCoLossal team of Garry and myself.

Although we only had 14 boats this year, it was still a great event, and well worth the effort of sailing across the paddock.