PHOTOS: NSW 18ft skiff finale

Action and dismastings on Sydney Harbour

Heat six, the final of the Casio New South Wales 18ft skiff championship on Sydney Harbour, saw skiff veteran Trevor Barnabas' Omega Smeg take line honours but John Harris' Rag & Famish Hotel win the championship overall in the 18 boat fleet, by just one point from John Winning's Yandoo.

The light to moderate southeasterly breeze proved challenging conditions for the fleet in the complex wind situation in the harbour here, with the added bonus of numerous ferries, containers ships plus a fleet of Lasers from the Sydney International Regatta to contend with.

Leading the charge around the first mark was John Winning Jnr on the old Yandoo, now called Panasonic. Winning Snr on board the new Yandoo got off to a slow start but eventually pulled in a second place. "We were out of it early, just not quite on the line as well as I should have been and we went right and did well and went to the left and didn't do so well, so we were in the back half of the fleet going round the first mark," the wily Winning Snr told thedailysail adding that he felt that he'd picked up places on his mark roundings. The new Yandoo has the same big rig as the old boat, but has a new little rig.

There was drama shortly after the first mark rounding a few hundred metres after the boats had popped their kites when, with a loud band, the top of half of the mast on Chris Dixon's CST Composites fell in the drink (see photos on page 3).

Racing on the complex course around the harbour, Trevor Barnabas was largely sailing his own race taking a massive tack off to the Opera House side of the course on one of the beats back to the weather mark behind Shark Island. On a subsequent beat this tactic paid off big time taking Barnabas into the lead which he was able to hang on to eventually winning by a margin of 22 seconds over Yandoo which in turn was 1 minute 12 seconds ahead of Grant Rollerson's team on Fisher & Paykel.

"We're pretty happy," Barnabas told thedailysail. "We still have a fair bit of work to do. When it was a bit fresher we seemed to be going better."

The NSW State Championship, which is used as a qualifier for the JJ Giltanan Trophy series in January (the top 14 boats go through), was hampered for Barnabas and many of the other leading Aussie skiff teams who this summer brought their boats to Europe and then on to San Francisco, as there were hold-ups in the shipping of their boats back to Australia. "They were delayed by three weeks in San Francisco and then they went to Korea and sat on the wharf there for three weeks," said Barnabas. As a result they missed the first race of the championships and were awarded average points.

For John Harris' team on board Rag & Famish Hotel, the objective of the day was to beat Michael Coxon's Casio Seapathfinder which would enable them to take the NSW championship for the third time. "They were well in front of us early but we snuck in front of them around the track and it was match racing from then on and we punched them back in the fleet," Harris said. Like Yandoo, Rag & Famish is one of the three new McConaghys-built 18ft skiffs launched this season. The old boat is now called Churchills Sports Bar and is being raced by Ben Austin.

The next meet for the 18ft skiffs is the world championship, the JJ Giltinan Trophy in early January.