Welcome to Radio Control Sailing Australia

The Mawson Lakes Model Yacht Club RC Laser club championship has been sailed over 8 rounds during winter. Winners of rounds included Lindsay Sawyer, Tim Arland, Steven Cibich, Phil Clerke and Adrian Heard. The overall place-getters were 1^st Tim Arland 2^nd Adrian Heard and 3^rd Garry Polomka. There were 14 sailors competing in the championship.

Tim Arland is a new RC Laser sailor this year who has a strong local record in IOM and A Class model yachts. He has adapted to sailing RC Lasers very quickly. He was a clear winner of the championship winning 3 of the 8 rounds.

We are currently sailing our Twilight Series at Port River Sailing Club. This series is held on Thursday nights and the venue is well known to the 32 Laser sailors who made their way there for the SA State Titles earlier this year. This is always a really fun series and this year some sailors have shown strong performances. In round 3, Garry Polomka had a great night and in round 4, Kym Stringer really showed the field how to sail. Overall, there are 12 rounds to this series and there is always a great meal put on by Port River after the sailing.

Dates set for SA State Titles 2022

The 2022 SA States will be held at Wallaroo Sailing Club on April 2^nd and 3^rd.

Please put this date in your diaries!

Wallaroo is a comfortable 2 hours drive north of Adelaide and the marina there offers an excellent location for sailing. The SA Masters Games were held at this venue in 2021 and Gary Hein from Portland ventured north for the event and he really enjoyed the venue. Accomodation is available at two caravan parks in Wallaroo, but nearby Kadina and Moonta have good accommodation options as well. The Copper Coast – as the three towns are called – has a combined population of 15,000, so the facilities in the area are excellent.

Peter Elverd, who is the commodore of Wallaroo Sailing Club is an RC Laser sailor and the club has a growing RCL fleet.

We wish all RC Laser sailors a happy Christmas and we hope to see many people from interstate at our State Championships in April 2022.

Adrian Heard

We are pleased to confirm that the Victorian State Titles scheduled for the weekend of 26th & 27th June are going ahead as planned.

The venue is the Royal Geelong Yacht club and interstate visitors are most welcome.

Here is the link to the Notice of Race

Scott Fleming is the organiser and you’ll find his contact details in the NOR.

Advance notice for events coming up are as follows:

Victorian State Titles- 26-27 June at Royal Geelong Yacht Club, VIC.
NSW State Titles – 22 August at Dobroyd Aquatic Club, Rodd Point, NSW

National Championships and Queensland State Championships – 22nd – 24th October, Emerald Lakes, Carrara, QLD

All sailors are welcome to participate in these friendly events.

Further details will appear on the ARYA website https://radiosailing.org.au/index.php?arcade=events

Here is the link to the NOR for the Nationals

Here is the link to the NOR for the Victorian State Titles

On April 15/16 just a few days after the South Australian RC Laser State Titles a small group of RC Laser sailors ventured two hours north of Adelaide to take part in the South Australian Master’s Games on the Copper Coast.

The Copper Coast is the name for the combined towns of Wallaroo, Kadina and Moonta on northern Yorke Peninsula. The radio controlled sailing component of the Games took place at the Wallaroo Marina and included five RC Laser sailors and six IOM sailors. Wallaroo is an emerging RC Laser fleet with Peter Elverd and Neville Hank both relatively new to RC Laser sailing.

The Wallaroo Marina proved to be a tricky place to sail. While it looks benign in the picture below, this view to the north fails to show the 8 storey Cooper’s Alehouse building which is directly south-west of the control area and which causes some fairly extreme changes in wind direction and strength on the course area.

On the first day the south-westerly wind was 12-15 knots and while the port side of the course was generally favoured on the first half of the windward leg there were occasional big lifts on the starboard side on the second half. This made picking the best course very interesting indeed, and very trying and mentally demanding for all the RC Laser sailors. B rigs were the order of the day.

I adapted best to the conditions probably because of doing my RC apprenticeship at Mawson Lakes, which helped me pick the extreme wind shifts. Gary Hein and Bob Whitehead battled with getting into irons in some of the bigger shifts. Neville Hank struggled with the shifts and with rounding the windward mark in the reflected sunlight on the water near the mark. Peter Elverd, would I think, describe his day as frustrating, as I know he is a better sailor than his performance showed.

Day two looked a lot more promising with a 5-8 knot westerly wind at our 11am starting time. Neville Hank flourished in these conditions with some excellent starts and a first and two seconds in the first 4 races. Unfortunately for Neville, these conditions didn’t last and by lunch time we were back to a south-westerly wind very similar to day one. This also led to similar results to the previous day except that Peter Elverd and Gary Hein sailed more consistently and Bob Whitehead probably became more frustrated with buoy roundings and collisions. To be quite frank we were all exhausted when the last race was finished.

That night at the clubhouse dinner Gary’s wife Dianne, who had been watching us from the opposite side of the marina on day one, gave a fairly frank account of our standard of windward buoy roundings. None of us faired particularly well, but she is clearly an important reason for the sailing successes of the Hein family. I won the event on 20 points, Gary Hein despite buoy roundings did well to finish in second place (45 points) and Peter Elverd finished third (50 points).

Many thanks to Peter and Julie Elverd and Neville Hank and Margaret Pope for all their work and excellent hospitality. The Wallaroo sailing club provided fabulous facilities and highly competent volunteers to officiate in this well-run event.

Words by Adrian Heard