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Fourteen DAC RC Laser Sailors recently mentored ten teenagers from Hornsby Ku-ring-ai Sailing Club, in how to sail the RC Laser. The teenagers sail on the Hawkesbury River near Brooklyn and their club, although small, has produced a number of State Champions, National Champions and even an Olympic medallist.

This was the planning of Graham Brown who has been involved with the Hornsby Ku-ring-ai Sailing Club for over 40 years and has been instrumental in their instruction in dinghy sailing and racing.

Each DAC sailor was assigned a “novice” for the day. The format was for alternate races being sailed by a novice under the watchful eyes and advice of the more experienced RC sailors. The in-between races were then sailed by our regular sailors for our normal point score.

The conditions were a light Westerly on smooth waters, and there was some leftover weed from the weather the previous week.

The eventual Teams Winner was Peter Close and Alex Stewart ( Current HKSC Commodore) who showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of the fleet. Alex adapted very quickly to the subtleties of RC sailing and, combined with the skill of Peter Close, were clear winners. It was decided that, due to the experience and age of Team Close / Stewart, an age allowance was imposed and the prizes went to the runner up team of Noel McPherson and Cadel Stewart (Alex’s son).

The ‘novices’ surprised us all at how quickly they grasped the necessary idiosyncrasies of remote controlling a sailing craft – we were very impressed – well done all.

A very successful day with smiles all round, including a few Mums watching. Well done and thank you Members for your support!

Thanks to Graham Brown for the Club background input and Noel McPherson and Eliza Kemp’s Mum for the photos.

Scoring for the “oldies” was based on 5 Races.

Graham Brown took the honours for the day to win 1st place on 6 points.

Peter Close finished in 2nd place on 10 points.

Robin Tickner finished in 3rd place with 14 points.

The Club Championship now has Peter Close in front from Graham Brown and Noel McPherson.

From Brian Chapman #246.

With 32 entries this year’s titles represented the largest ever fleet for a South Australia RC Laser Titles. The fleet included 14 sailors from Victoria, 2 from New South Wales and 16 from South Australia. The titles were sailed over the weekend of April 10/11 at Port River Sailing Club using the SHRS scoring system.

Saturday was windy with regular southerly rain squalls blowing down the river. The day started at 20 knots with gusts to 25 knots, and we finished up sailing only four races due to the wind eventually reaching 25 knots plus by 4pm.

In Saturday’s qualifying races Scott Fleming and Scott Mitchell showed their prowess at sailing in strong winds in D rigs. Grant Gillespie and Peter Burton also sailed well, and Phil Clerke did a great job in winning the last heat in very strong conditions. Brad Hein had an unfortunate collision and had to pull out of the third race for the day.

On Sunday the weather was slightly better, but we still donned our D rigs for the early races. We sailed two more qualifying races before sailing four final races in gold and silver fleets. The starts were tricky due to the port end of the start line being favoured for most of the day’s races. Also, an incoming tide was a factor for the final races.

Scott Fleming, who was trailing Scott Mitchell overnight, made a strong comeback on Sunday with three wins and two seconds in the five races. The front section of the gold fleet was fairly tightly packed going around the windward mark and a couple of big knocks near the mark made the action exciting. The host club Mawson Lakes main contender was Phil Clerke, who got some great starts and got a first and third place. Mario Gulic was the real comeback kid on Sunday with excellent results in four races. He narrowly missed line honours to Scott Fleming in the last race.

Overall, in the gold fleet Scott Fleming ran out an easy winner to Scott Mitchell second, and Phil Clerke third. Peter Burton, the defending champion finished fourth. In the silver fleet, Peter Yates successfully defended his 2019 title, followed by Rob O’Brien and Alex Hayter. We didn’t get as many races in as we expected due to the strong winds, but virtually all sailors reported having a great time regardless. As someone said with 32 entries it felt like a ‘mini-nationals’.

Thanks go to Stewart Ross our RO, Mario Gulic, Lorraine Berry and Rose Ross for scoring, Alex and Sue Hayter for having us at Port River Sailing Club, Garry Loughead for running the rescue boat, Meredith Reardon and Janet Luther for organising and serving the food, Bob Whitehead and Lindsay Sawyer for conducting the measuring, Gaynor Kouwenhoven, Mike Turner and Chris Levi for handling entries and administration and to Dean Bonnett and Gerry Geibel for photography and general assistance. You all made a great support team for a series that was sailed and run in a very friendly way!

Registration Open

The weekend of April 10^th and 11^th is the RC Laser South Australian State Titles 2021 and here at the Club we are gearing up for a big event. Let’s hope that Covid-19 restrictions don’t prevent a large contingent of interstate visitors from participating in this event.

We have been informed that two of our past State Champions Scott Fleming (Vic) and Peter Burton (NSW) will be participating given that borders are open. Those two visitors may strongly tempt our other local State Champion Scott Mitchell to also take part. Throw Brad Hein from Portland into that mix and it should be a very keenly contested series.

We expect a strong group of local sailors (Mawson Lakes and Wallaroo) to be combined with a good Portland group, a Geelong group and a reasonable sized Patterson Lakes group, which should give us an excellent fleet for this event. We hope to see a contingent of Queenslanders and NSW sailors as well.

As an incentive for registering for these titles we are offering two barbeques to participants. On the Saturday evening we will draw the names of two registrants from a hat and they will be the lucky owners of one of these barbeques.

Registration is now available online at www.mawsonlakesmyc.com so please get those registrations rolling in.

Sailing at Port River is quite different to Mawson Lakes with more reliable sea breezes and slightly bigger waves. It has become a regular Laser sailing venue over the past few years, and we feel sure that you will enjoy the sailing experience.

Below is a map showing the access to Port River Sailing Club. The Club is on the Lefevre Peninsula to the north of Port Adelaide. The main road in the map is Victoria Road and you turn off to the Dolphin Sanctuary via Willochra St. The location of the club is shown by the black circle.

Registration is now available online at www.mawsonlakesmyc.com

Adrian Heard

Email heard.14.au@gmail.com  Phone 0427 833 324

After a long period of lockdown due to Covid-19, the South Australian Laser fleet is back in the water. Even though Mawson Lakes Model Yacht Club is still closed, we run unstructured sailing at Mawson Lakes each Wednesday, and we have regularly been getting 6-7 Laser sailors in attendance. We are also running unstructured sailing at West Lakes one Saturday a month so that those Laser sailors who work during the week also have a chance to sail.

Last Sunday we had a sail at Hart’s Mill, one of South Australia’s premier RC sailing venues. As you can see from the photo, we had a light south-easterly breeze but great sailing was had by all participants.

During the Covid-19 period some significant developments have taken place in the South Australian RC Laser fleet. Don Turnbull has been regularly travelling up to Wallaroo, about an hour and a half north of Adelaide, and has now recruited several members of the local club into the SA fleet. Also, Mark Keeble from Mildura has bought several RC Lasers and we look forward to racing at Lake Cullulleraine with him in future. We have another new member of the MLMYC fleet, Bruce Backman who has joined us recently with RCL #169.

We have released a revised 2020 program with a date of October 31 and November 1 for our State Titles. This is about a month after the planned date for the Nationals and we hope we will get lots of interstate visitors for this event.

We wish all other Australian fleets well and hope to see some of you at Emerald Lakes in early October.

Adrian Heard

The host club has changed for the 2020 RC Laser Australian Championships. The event will now be hosted by Paradise Radio Yacht Club over the weekend 3rd – 5th October 2020 – a long weekend in QLD, NSW and SA.

The venue is Emerald Lakes, where the very successful Championship of Nations was held in 2017.

The experienced organisers at Paradise Radio Yacht Club will undoubtedly put on a great event. It’s one to mark in the diary now.