Wednesday, April 17, 2013

J/24 Australia- Sailing's A Cracker!

J/24 one-design sailboats- sailing Australian Nationals(Sandringham, Australia)- The recent J/24 Australian Championships held at Sandringham Yacht Club in January always seems to produce some amusing anecdotes and stories along the way.  Many of them are posted in the "HIT THE MARK" J/24 Oz class newsletter published about once a quarter.  Here's one of those "tongue-in-cheeky" reports-

"Just in case you’ve been in a coma, the Nationals were bigger than Christmas. The J24 Vic Association had 23 entries from Sydney, Adelaide and even Cairns. This event has been reported by Simon Grain in his usual excellent manner on the national web site so I won’t go into detail her but well extend a huge well done and congrats to Arthur Corrothers and helmsman Ben Lamb in winning their first Australian Title and of course to our own Adam Evans coming in forth place as top Victorian.

Well... the social side was just as brilliant. I wish I could remember half of it. A welcome barbie on Saturday... Caribbean Calypso night Tuesday, both very well attended and much enjoyed. The Presentation night was easily the best one I’ve ever been to. Apart from the winning trophy the highlight was the BEST LADIE'S BRUISE contest, sponsored by Hershell Landes, this spontaneous competition saw one female crew member from Adelaide drop her pants on stage to show off a bit of a bruise on her upper thigh. Now, I’ll be honest, and I was pretty close to the action, the bruise wasn’t the biggest in the room but the dropping of the pants was a master-stroke and the expensive bottle of wine was easily won. To thunderous applause, I might add. (Please, mop my sweaty brow someone!)

The evening went on, need I say, to be a huge night that included drinking, dancing and the making of lurv, but I can assure you, not by this correspondent. I know we are all very thankful to MUSTO who were official and sole suppliers of apparel and have extended to us a great deal that we were very fortunate to get. UK Halsey also sponsored us with a $500 voucher for a sail, a trip on George was also donated by Steve Aulich and there were many Musto goodies too, all of which made the raffle fantastic. Also, thanks again to Pete Holmes, who sails on Crackerjack and who supplied all of the graphic design we needed to make posters, hats, shirts, bags and this very newsletter! Just a brilliant job!!"  Speaking of "brilliant", download the entire "HIT THE MARK" J/24 Australia Newsletter here.