Sailors in the 2019 Koombana Bay Sailing Club Regatta, held over the March long weekend, were blessed with varied winds and close competition.
Visitors from around the state converged on Koombana Bay with around 40 boats entering in a mix of classes, from junior dinghy sailors to catamarans up to large keelboats.
The weekend also incorporated the NACRA Catamaran and Australian Formula 18 Catamaran Western Australia state titles.
Saturday afternoon (March 2) saw a steadily building sea breeze that peaked around 20 knots.
This had many of the dinghy sailors struggling, and half pulled out before the second race.
Sunday morning had variable light easterly winds that needed skippers to search around for pressure to succeed.
Most fleets delayed their start slightly for a 10am shipping movement.
The sea breeze came in just before lunch time at a steady 12-15 knots for a perfect afternoon's racing.
The dinghy series was won by Ashton Harris who sailed consistently well and won most of the races.
Charli Farrah was 11 points behind and our local dinghy sailors Jack Huxtable took third place with Kathleen Ryan in fourth.
Keelboat divisions one and two combined to form an eight boat fleet.
The racing was more spread out with Neil Young sailing Easy Tigerwinning ahead of Gil Sowden on Empty Pockets and Graeme Lohman on Footloose.
The five boats in the jib and main only fleet saw some close racing, with Pat Garvey winning on Cooee 4 ahead of Marcus Zulsdorf on Stress Management and Denham McMullen on String Theory.
In the NACRA Catamaran State Championships, Ashley Rowley on Ash Rowley took the win ahead of Michael Mlynarczyk on North to Southand and Stephen Van Blerk on TechDen.
In the F18 Fleet State Championships, Brett Burvill and Max Puttman on Windrush claimed the win followed by Glenn Randall and Grant Maver on Bulletproof Civil, who flew over from New South Wales for the event.
GiddyUp sailed by Gavin Parker and Dan Brown finished third.
The next local regatta is the Naturaliste Yachts Stayers Series commencing on March 31 and is held over three weekends, with two races per day.
Koombana Bay Sailing Club will then host the 2019 Combined Australian Hansa Class Championships over the Easter weekend.
Head to the Koombana Bay Sailing Club website and Facebook page for more details.
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