Another normal picture perfect Queensland spring day with a light E – NE breeze similar to Thursday and steady in direction made the work easy for the PRO. There was only three races completed today due to longer courses set and significant downtime for protest hearings including one by 147 against 95 that was dismissed.

With it coming to the money end of the championship things were getting a little tense with general recalls being a common occurrence with the start being so important which such a quality fleet.

With a third drop being available after the first race of the day Graham Bantock moved into second place and with Craig Smith taking a trip to B fleet as a result of a withdrawal from race 20 and Graham stringing two wins together to round out the day the places were reversed. Paul Jones had another consistent day with placings of 4, 3, and 3 to move ahead of Martin Roberts.

With only 5 points between Graham and Craig and with Paul a further 8 points back and at least three races today the result is anything but certain. As they say, it is not over until the fat lady sings and she doesn’t sing until around 1600 today.

With this being the last day and with the Award Presentation this evening we hope all our visitors have enjoyed the regatta and your time in South East Queensland.

We wish you all a safe trip home.

With the lay day over action continued at Quad Park in picture perfect warm sunny conditions and a consistent light easterly. Sailing on course 3 again a total of four races were completed during the day.

After completion of sailing yesterday there was only slight rearrangement in the placings of the top five with Peter Stollery slipping from third to fifth. With only 14 points separating the top five it is still open with two days sailing to go.

Graham was back in form today with the lowest score of the day (12 points) from Martin with 16 and Paul 18, closing the gap slightly on Craig in the lead. After the five days of racing Craig still leads with 66 pts from Martin, 70 and Graham on 72. Paul 79 and Peter 80 are still not out of the picture. With a further drop due after completion of race 19 the gap should close further with Graham having the greatest discard.

The first five placed skippers are sailing five different designs, Craig Smith - Obsession, Martin Roberts - Gadget, Graham Bantock – Topico, Paul Jones – Cockatoo 2 and Peter Stollery – Isotonic, with no particular design appearing to have any significant edge over the full range of conditions experienced

The weather forecast for the remainder of the regatta is predicting fine days and max temperatures of around 25C and light to moderate breezes tending more northerly.

What a regatta. At the mid way stage the contest for the top spots is wide open and effectively the regatta starts again for the championship on Thursday after all are refreshed in having rested!!! over the lay day.

Tuesday saw light testing conditions in the morning making things difficult for the skippers and the races a bit of a lottery before the breeze settled from the NE for most of the day.

Graham Bantock dropped to B fleet  and took two races to climb back into A fleet, dropping to 4^th and allowing Craig Smith who had some very good results on the day to return to the lead on 48 points from the very consistent Martin Roberts on 54 and Peter Stollery on 58. Graham finished on 59 with Paul Jones still in the picture on 61. The youngest competitor Joshua Torpy  is in a very creditable 29^th place.

The interest in the event world wide resulted in overload on the Worlds website (exceeding 10 Gb per day) and it was down for some 24 hrs while Webmaster Eddie Cowell resolved things with the Web host. In the meantime the site was temporally transferred to the ARYA site www.radiosailing.org.au With grateful thanks to Rainer Blank from Germany &  Mark Kennedy from the USA  Eddie has been able to off load some of his photos to their servers until the traffic dies down. This should enable daily photos to continue to be posted for the remainder of the event.

Due to problems with the onsite printer due to the dusty environment Frequensea is now printed commercially in grayscale for distribution on site but a colour version will continue to be posted on the official web site. My apologies for any inconvenience.

19th Sept: Grove Fruit Juice 2005 World IOM Championship – Day 3

Sunday saw the normal perfect weather return with clear skies and a gentle easterly breeze filling in the full range of conditions to date. Four races were completed which should see us all getting a lay day tomorrow (Wednesday) which will be appreciated.

The interest in the event is high with good media coverage and a large number of hits on the Web site. The success of the web site and the massive downloading of pictures have resulted in the daily bandwidth of 10GB per day being exceeded and the site temporally suspended until it can be transferred to a larger server. This may take up to 24 hrs. In the meantime the results only have been posted to the ARYA site at www.radiosailing.org.au

The feedback on the site has been great but the preference is for less boat pictures and more people shots so in this issue picture content has changed. The emphasis will also be changed on the web picture content as soon as it is back on line although pictures may have to be limited in the interests of reducing bandwidth demand on the site.

The racing say Graham Bantock with more consistent sailing and a win in race 10 move further clear of the field on 19 points from Craig Smith (33) and Peter Stollery with two wins for the day  tied with Martin Roberts on 35. With Paul Jones a further 2 points away it will be a tight contest for the placings for the balance of the regatta.

It should be another perfect day today with Light to moderate

IOM World Championship results - day 2 (pdf)

Photo Gallery (36 pictures)

Graeme Turk

Graeme Turk