John Sails Trophy
Craig Piccinelli has firmed his intention on winning the Johns Sails Trophy with Wobbly Boot after a surprisingly wayward start in race one of the series. Piccinelli possesses an excellent tactical knowledge of racing over the Whitsunday Sailing Club Pioneer Bay courses but that was amiss with a disappointing seventh behind race winner Riff Raff (John Hudson).
Predictably the Wobbly Boot crew exercised their experience to fight back winning heat 2 and were in a strong position to win heat three when skipper Piccinelli and crew dominated the battle for line honours to eventually win the first to finish prize by a comfortable 2 minutes 21 seconds over John Galloway’s Queensland Marine Services.
However while the Wobbly Boot crew cleverly sailed every available wind variation their effort fell just 20 seconds short of winning the line and handicap double when Terry Archer steered the Bavaria 42 cruiser AFRICA to win the major points ahead of Wobbly Boot and Rising Farrst (Tim Osborne).
This tight corrected time result has set the stage for a mate against mate tactical dogfight for control of the points table with AFRICA becoming the target after last week’s 20 second win allowed them to become the provisional leader on count back over Wobbly Boot and Riff Raff.
AFRICA (2-7-1), Wobbly Boot (7-1-2) and Riff Raff (1-5-4) all have identical scores but this will change when the sails are tensioned to control the advantage line in what promises to be an interesting match race on Pioneer Bay this week.
Recent form suggests Wobbly Boot will be the pacesetter but her crew will need to make sure they can reproduce their line honours win of last week to hold any chance of outpacing their .788 time correction factor over AFRICA .737 and Riff Raff .691.
Skipper Craig Piccinelli will also be under pressure to ensure that Wobbly Boot finds an early use of sailing space in clear wind or face a challenge from the crews of AFRICA and Riff Raff who are equally determined and capable of controlling the points table after this week’s important fourth race.
Only five points separate the top six and this alone suggests there will be no place to hide with a clear start becoming a major priority for all six skippers with Tim Osborne protecting his consistent 5-4-3 score and fourth place against John Galloway in Queensland Marine Services 6-2-5 and Kevin Fogarty’s Idle Time 3-6-6. All six crews are capable of winning the Johns Sails Trophy which places a huge demand on the respective skippers, tacticians and crews to produce the required tactical options and all angle boat speed to outpace their respective handicaps.
Average times over the three races favour Wobbly Boot (2-50-47) by 12 seconds over Riff Raff (2-50-59) with 21 seconds to Africa (2-51-20) but those margins are set to change when the fleet line up to contest the trophy deciding fourth race on Pioneer Bay this week.