• Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race – Organised by the CYCA (R1)
• Bird Island – Sydney - Rtn Yacht Race (R2)
• Cabbage Tree Island Yacht Race – Organised by the CYCA (R3)
• Newcastle Rtn Yacht Race (R4)
• 75th Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race – Organised by the CYCA (R5)
• Sydney – Bird Island – Rtn Yacht Race (6)
• Port Hacking - Rtn Race (R7)
• Port Stephens Race (R8)

It was RPAYC’s turn to host the 3^rd stage of the Interclub regatta on Sunday 23^rd of June.
The Interclub Challenge sees sailors from the four yacht clubs, CYCA, NCYC, RSYS and RPAYC get out on the water and compete in this fleet racing challenge. Each yacht club has a turn of hosting the event, and is represented by two teams, with the combined scores of the two teams going towards an aggregated pointscore to determine the winning yacht club.

The Alfred’s once again was represented by the Intermediate Youth Development Squad. Both teams had their moments of brilliance, with each team getting podium finishes in amongst the 6 races.
The team skippered by Ellis Merrett secured a win in the final race of the day, which proved to be crucial when breaking the tie at the end of the day, helping secure 3^rd place. “This is a great regatta to introduce our young sailors into keelboat one design racing. In recent years we have made the decision to send our Intermediated Squad (IYD) in Lieu of our Senior Youth Development squad (YD). This has helped fast track these young sailors progress and therefore create more depth within our program” commented Head Coach Tom Spithill.

Boat of the day spoils went to Jed Cruickshank, representing the RSYS. Jed dropped his worse placed result of 4^th place to carry 5 heat wins. Winning in dominant fashion.
RSYS also took out the Club of the day title, with the combined score of both teams being enough to edge out the CYCA.

Race officer Robert McClelland did a great job to get away the 6 races. It was an impressive feat for the race committee, who had some volunteers onboard who had been out on the water since 7 am after hosting the popular “dustbuster” series prior to the Interclub.

A big thank you for all involved, in particular the parents and sailors from NCYC for making the journey down.

We look forward to the final stage of the Interclub to be hosted by The CYCA next weekend on 30^th of June.

Full Results Here

Whilst for some sailors, the forecast of a closed water strong wind warning and a 95% chance of rain, the temptation to say “bugger that” and sleep in would have been strong!

However, that wasn’t the case, with once again 17 boats getting out on the water for a 0815hrs first warning signal on Sunday morning for the second stage of the dustbuster. 

Making their Dustbuster Debut, Two skud 18’s came out to play. The Skud 18 was the double handed class used in the Paralympics. An adaptive class, the Skud allows disabled and able-bodied sailors to get out on the water an enjoy fast OD racing.
The Skud’s surprised many with their downwind speed, as they rocketed downwind. The combination of Linda Buchan and Alistair Reed, narrowly took boat of the day spoils with a 1,2,1 scorecard.
Niall Powers and Alistair Reed are current Youth Development squad members relished the opportunity to jump in the Skud class. “I got quite a surprise when the boat lit up downwind” commented a Jubilant Niall Powers.

The Etchells once again had a healthy fleet of 7 boats turning up on the start line. The Crawford’s came out with a win in the first race of the day, and once again it looked like they would dominate the day. However it didn’t all go their way, with Grand V and 2107 racing both taking race victories. “Getting off the line cleanly and getting the first shift really gave you a comfortable jump” commented a pleased Will Dargaville, who won the last two races of the day.

The RPAYC Fleet of 8 x Elliott 7’s once again had plenty of crash and burn action, with some “love taps” and some spectacular trawling.
Pat Langley put in a dominant performance, with 4 bullets. However Pat found himself mid fleet at times, but managed to do a great job of picking the shifts to easily pass his opponents. Pat has now come within 1 point on the overall Pointscore, with Easy Tiger’s Chris Way still holding top spot.

Commodore Michael Lockley sailing with his old sparring buddy and past Commodore Russell Murphy elected to utilize both experience and youth with Youth Development Graduates Liam Bennett and Lauren Crossman helping round out his crew. The commodore had a string of different results, which included a third place in the second race of the day. “I’m just happy that Russell and myself managed to not fall in the drink!” commented a reflective Lockley.

The Int 5.5’s class was missing in action. Adding to the mystery of who will be the form boat leading up to the 2020 worlds. Speculation has it that a few of the owners are doing secret training in Europe.

David West and his race management team did a great job getting away 4 windward leeward races, with the racing done and dusted by 1030hrs

Stage 3 of the Dustbuster regatta is scheduled for the 28^th of July - Lock it in your calendar now!

FULL RESULTS HERE

Fellow Yachties,

Just a reminder that ours is a self-policing sport, in that in most cases we don’t have umpires on water, so it’s up to us to all obey the rules.

With that in mind, we should all remember that if we are involved in an incident on the water we should protest. By doing so everybody learns and it hopefully resolves the ongoing disputes and discussions.

We have had a couple of incidents recently on the water where the correct process has not been followed so the protest has been deemed invalid. So please remember a few actions that must take place:

1. The protesting boat must say loudly “PROTEST”. That word must be used, and you should include the name of the boat you are protesting.
2. You must display a protest flag immediately, within 30 seconds is good but you might get away with 1 minute, but not if you say; “Oh it was down in the navigators table and we had to find it”.
3. You must lodge a ‘protest form’ within the time limit, which varies for each series and can be found in section 23 of the General Notice of Race in the club handbook.
4. You may be asked if you are willing to attend a mediation hearing more or less straight away. By doing this, two things can be achieved. Firstly, you will get an opinion there and then and the penalty if any can be reduced. Secondly it can alleviate the need to attend a formal Protest Meeting on the next Wednesday evening when protests are heard in our club.
5. If you think you may have infringed the Rules take a penalty (See section 18 of GNoR) and save the need for the other boat to protest, and it’s better than a DSQ if the protest decision goes against you.

Please let’s all learn that protesting is not a bad thing as we can all benefit from a better knowledge of the Racing Rules, so we can all go out there and have more fun, which after all is what we are on the water for.

See you on the water.

RPAYC Protest Committee

The Club has a huge season ahead with a number of Class Regattas scheduled at both National and International level, with that in mind and the continuous aim of increasing knowledge of our club race officials we started the first of many regular forums and welcomed Rob Brown to assist with training and mentoring of existing and new race officials.

If you are not currently involved and would like to be please contact the sailing office. 

Members are advised that the Nominations for Elected Officers for 2019/20 is now open.

The positions open for nomination are:
2 x Directors – 2019-2022 term
Rear Commodore Membership – 2019-2021 term
Rear Commodore Yacht Racing – 2019-2021 term

For full details CLICK HERE. 

Nominations are open to Full members, and if you are interested in any of these roles, nomination forms are available from reception.

A General Meeting was held at the Club on Tuesday 11 June, 2019, where members were invited to voice their opinion and vote on a new Crew Membership category and a change to the Family Membership package.

Members are advised that neither motion was carried.

The Pittwater Regatta

Congratulations go to the following placegetters in the Sailability Pittwater Regatta which was raced over the long weekend here at the club. 

2.4mR
Peter Russell         AUS 1121  1st    
Michael Leydon    AUS 46     2nd 
Mark Durnan        AUS47       3rd 

Liberty
Allan Jones          AUS 1067  1st 
Alyse Saxby        AUS 1213  2nd 
Nick Reed           “Freedom” 3rd 

The NSW Optimist Association ran their Travellers Trophy Series 1 at Georges River Sailing Club over the June long weekend, with invited classes of Laser Radial, Laser 4.7, 29ers, 420, Nacra 15, RS-X and Bic Techno, as well as the popular Optimist fleets.

Racing was held with two course areas for the fleets. Optis, Lasers and 420’s were on Course Area A, and 29ers, Nacra’s and boards were on Course Area B.

The wind was very light for this regatta ranging from 0 to 5 knots for most of the three days. Included abandoned races, timed out sailors, shortened races and races that ended as a driftathon in the tide. RPAYC was well represented in most of the fleets of the Optimist, Lasers, 29ers and Nacra 15’s. Full results can be found at the following link:- http://sailingresults.com.au/ScoreItV2/Public/Templates/Default/index.php?event_id=851

Results for RPAYC were:-

Optimist Intermediate

• Eliott Verhaeghe - = 3^rd

Optimist Open

• Eva Attwood – 5^th
• Markus Sampson – 9^th
• Walter Tuite – 10^th
• Olivia Williams – 11^th
• Albie Brown – 13^th
• Will Troop – 20^th
• Charlie Byford – 29^th
• Kye Williams – 32^nd

Laser 4.7

• Bayley Taylor – 5^th (with 2 race wins)

29er

• Ellis Merrit / Oscar Verity – 3^rd (with 1 race win)

Nacra 15

• Bella Green / Josh Whitten – 4th

Australian Optimist Asians Team

Also, Cooper Bellingham is currently racing in Singapore with the Australian Optimist Asians Team, and they finished 3^rd in the Nationals Teams Racing event. Next they will be racing in the Singapore National Championships starting Wednesday.