By Ian Grant.
Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week and the Whitsunday Sailing Club will jointly celebrate the 21 year milestone with another impressive fleet lining up to contest the ‘Tropical Shirt ‘regatta next month.
Once again the popular series which officially launches the 2010 Festival of Sails regatta in the picturesque and warm winter land of the Whitsunday Islands has attracted widely diversified fleet.
Regatta founder Don Algie will again proudly fly his ‘battle flag’ when he contests the Cruising class championship at the helm of his Warwick 66 Storm 2 while the 2010 Asian Yachting Champion of the Year Ray Roberts (Evolution Racing)returns to avenge his 40 second loss of the Grand Prix IRC class title in 2009.
Skipper Ray Roberts and his Evolution Sails racing team have also nominated to contest the 2010 Audi Hamilton Island Race Week from August 21-28.
Meanwhile the popular owner skipper who is about the replace his multi-regatta winning New Zealand designed and built Cookson 50 with the 2007 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race champion Rosebud will be highly focused on adding another major regatta to the already impressive title list won by Evolution Racing.
The recent international regatta results suggest that the high performance Evolution Racing team will again be a front runner to win the Grand Prix IRC class crown.
But there will be no margin for error in either their tactical strategy or sail handling technique when they go head to head against the equally impressive James Farmer skippered New Zealand challenger Georgia.
Both highly competitive skippers are yet to declare their crews however James Farmer has strong ties with the New Zealand Black Magic Americas Cup campaign and it would not surprise to see some prominent AC names on his crew list.
However the New Zealand team of champions will need to produce something special to win the ‘Battle of The Tasman’ over Ray Roberts and his champion crew.
Sure they will be racing an older and slightly smaller yacht but they have the collective hard core experience of successfully racing on the tricky Whitsunday Sailing Club courses which could add the important marginal edge of seconds per mile for Evolution Racing to record the faster corrected handicap course times.
Naturally the balance of power in the struggle to win the 2010 Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week IRC championship rests entirely with the human element related performance of each crew to fire up under pressure which will be revealed when they go head to head for the first time when the sails are tensioned in the opening race of the series on Friday August 13.