Black Jack
By Ian Grant.
Yandina boat builder David Biggar has finally allowed his wet weather sailing suit to dry after an extensive season of ocean racing on board Peter Harburg’s Black Jack.
The super competitive blue water sailor has returned to an equally busy lifestyle catching up with a back log of building contracts at his Stallion Marine complex.
His sailing career with the Black Jack racing team has been temporarily placed on hold until the next major ocean passage race against their arch New South Wales rival the Bob Oatley owned Wild Oats X.
Their recent head to head clash against Wild Oats X and the larger Sydney maxi Lahana for the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week Gun Boat trophy revealed some interesting statistics.
As expected the longer waterline length allowed Lahana with five wins from nine races to claim the prestigious trophy ahead of her almost identical match racing rivals with a total elapsed time of 16 hours 1 minute 5 seconds while Black Jack 16-8-42 claimed second fastest by 19 seconds from Wild Oats X.
Naturally Lahana with an almost 10 metre length advantage proved too powerful in the varied range of sailing conditions however based on the calculation of metres of waterline length over the total elapsed time Black Jack was fractionally the faster overall by .00002 seconds per metre over Wild Oats X.
This interesting boat on boat match race is sure to continue when the two crews go head to head for the line honours trophy during the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour race in January 2011.
Meanwhile David Biggar will continue with his busy boat building schedule at Yandina and keep his hand in with regular weekend end club racing at Mooloolaba and Brisbane while the connections of Wild Oats X and Black Jack seriously evaluate their options to find a marginal edge in boat speed.
The difference of 19 seconds between Black Jack and Wild Oats X over 9 races may not seem to be important to the average sailor but the time factor remains significantly important to the crew holding the ‘bragging rights’.
They also remain aware that speed separation is marginal which sets the stage for a full scale boat on boat match race when they continue with the tactical clash which became the highlight of 2009-2010 Australian ocean racing season.
As proved with the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week results both almost identical John Reichel and Jim Pugh designed 20m yachts are evenly matched which places a big demand on the crew and the associated tactical strategy to prove the fastest on the race course.
The determined nature of the competition leaves little margin for error with the pressure on Black Jack to keep her bow in front when the State of Origin war on the water with their New South Wales rival Wild Oats X enters a new phase in 2011.