Flying start for RMW

James Boyd reports from the opening of the JJ Giltinan Trophy for the 18ft skiffs

Rob Greenhalgh's RMW Marine got off to a blistering start in the 2004 JJ Giltinan International Championship for the 18ft skiffs on Sydney Harbour today.

The first race of the series started in a 14 knot northeasterly breeze and saw Greenhalgh's team of brother Pete and Dan Johnson take off from the committee boat end of the line alongside the American reigning champion Howie Hamlin and his team on West Marine.

"We fancied the committee boat as there was definitely bias. It is quite important to get into Bradley's Point as opposed being to the west of it," commented Greenhalgh later. "If you start the other end you end up to the west of Bradley's which is never a good position to be in." (Bradley's Head is a headland that protrudes into the left side of the course on the beat on this course).

The skiffs were racing on their normal race course for a northeasterly wind: starting off Clark Island near Darling Point, then sailing upwind towards the Heads to a weather mark set off Watson's Bay, before running back down with a dogleg around Shark Island returning to the finish - three round of this, missing out Shark Island on the second lap.

From the outset the yellow British boat was showing good height and pace, but towards the top mark the wind became extremely shifty. "The problem is it is very tricky - you are beating up there against the tide so you are trying to stay inshore out of the tide and you are also trying to hit into the headlands and the wind is shifting all over the place," explained Greenhalgh. "You have just got to try and get into phase. Sometimes you drop out of phase. You can't just keep tacking all the time so sometimes you just have to live with a bad one. We dropped out of phase a bit."

At the top mark Computer Associates had just got ahead. "The wind was shifting big time at that point and we came up to what we thought was the layline and the wind lifted us hugely and they came up round the side of us," recounted Greenhalgh. On the following downwind leg they pulled ahead and continued to extend as the wind dropped off slightly. Three laps later and RMW Marine finished first by almost two minutes - a smaller margin than the four minutes they had led by at the conclusion of the warm-up race the previous day.

All the boats were sailing under their small rigs, as the wind had been gusting up to 20 knots on shore prior to the start. In the end, the conditions would have favoured the bigger rigs. "It is one of those things," confirmed Greenhalgh. "You don't want to be stuck out there on the big rig, especially if it is going to be on the windy side. The wind does big shifts and sometime you get held up by the massive spectator craft and the waves are all over the show. You are pounding through all these waves all the time and the big rig would be really good for that."

After a good start the reigning champions, Howie Hamlin and West Marine got out of phase with the shifts to finish a disappointing 11th. "We got back into traffic in fifth then maybe took some chances we shouldn't have," Hamlin told thedailysail. Coming in towards the finish off Shark Island Hamlin was trounced by 18footer veteran Trevor Barnabas and the two parried for the line, Barnabas finishing just three seconds ahead.

West Marine is fitted with a unique new square-topped mainsail. "We wanted to try something different," Hamlin said. " RMW showed up in San Francisco with more power, so we got the Ullman guys to do these. Maybe it opens up better but everything is going to be more powerful."

Taking second and third positions were John Winning on Yandoo and Hugh Stodart on ASKO Appliances. ""We're pretty happy with our result," said Winning. "We'd be happy to win it. Second is the second best you can do!

"I think our speed was good. We started on the leeward end which is often good but we just didn't open out enough and the windward boats lifted off us, so we took a number of tails at Bradleys and we cleared a bit more and gradually picked them off one at a time." Yandoo was fourth at the weather mark and had moved up to second at Shark Island and held that position for the rest of the race. "They gave us a couple of frights a couple of times. Generally we just plugged away at it. It went a bit light probably up the second beat and we put the fin down a little further and I think we were actually slower after that! It's hard to know."

Generally the consensus is that RMW Marine is the form boat to the extent that the bookies resident on the spectator ship following the racing are no longer taking bets on her.

" RMW are sailing brilliantly. Look at how they have been dominating the last couple of year. I wouldn't be shocked at all if they just walked away with it," said Howie Hamlin in tribute to the British team.

" RMW will be bloody hard to beat," confirmed John Winning. "At the end of the day they probably deserve it, but we won't be giving it to them. They are bloody good sailors and you can't take that away from them. That may be the only difference. I might have to start looking at their sails more."

Winning added that with conditions changing for the middle of next week might reroll the dice with the wind possible going lighter and to the southeast, requiring the use of the big rigs.


Results:

Pos	Boat	Skipper	Finish time
1	RMW Marine	Rob Greenhalgh	05:18:05
2	Yandoo	John Winning	05:20:03
3	ASKO Appliances	Hugh Stodart	05:21:35
4	Rag & Famish Hotel	John Harris	05:21:44
5	Fisher & Paykel	Grant Rollerson	05:22:28
6	Computer Associates	Anthony Young	05:22:39
7	Maytag	Tony Hannan	05:23:39
8	Casio Seapathfinder	Michael Coxon	05:24:07
9	Panasonic	Jarrod Simpson	05:24:17
10	Omega Smeg	Trevor Barnabas	05:25:53
11	West Marine	Howie Hamblin	05:25:56
12	Nuplex	Phil Airey	05:26:00
13	Churchills Sports Bar	Ben Austin	05:26:24
14	Club Marine	Warwick Rooklyn	05:26:26
15	CST Composites	Chris Dixon	05:28:41
16	Rosemount	Micah Lane	05:28:57
17	Aristocrat	John Sweeny	05:30:33
18	Sunrise	Clynton Wade-Lehman	05:31:13
19	Avaya	Peter Morrison	05:35:13
20	Aust 18 footers league	Chris Pomfret	05:36:00
21	General Electric	Peter McKewen	05:41:41
22	Canada	Fred Eaton	05:44:59