RC Lasers at the Masters Games on SA’s Copper Coast

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