Charlie Enright’s Vestas 11th Hour Racing became the third team to grab a victory from four stages in Leg Zero – a series of pre-race qualifying stages for the next edition of the round-the-world race – as they sneaked ahead of MAPFRE in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The squad of six, under the guidance of coach James Hadden, a former British Sailing Team member, have made significant improvements.
In 2016 nine boats from Sydney and two from Melbourne made the trip to Cronulla, so hopefully this year we will get nine from Cronulla making the trip to Sydney, and hopefully more from interstate for good competitive racing.
Kiteboarding is no stranger to Royal Brighton Yacht Club, where there has been many kiting events held in the past. There are strong synergies between the two sports and this event represents a further strengthening of the relationship between kiting and sailing.
RGYC is currently in the bidding to deliver the 49er/NACRA World Titles in January, 2020, the Laser Masters World Titles in March, 2020, and the Fireball World Championships in January, 2022 in Geelong.
The decision to call a halt to the racing came late on Tuesday night as the stage had become a drifting contest, with the teams making a series of expensive gybes in a bid to find some wind, and latest ETAs predicting that the boats would not reach Lisbon until well into Thursday.
We had an email a couple of hours ago from Race Control saying that the forecast was no wind at all and they decided to shorten the race which I think is a good decision because this Leg Zero was already becoming quite long and we are looking forward to finish and have a good rest.
I took the opportunity to catch up with two of Australia's best race officials, Ross Wilson and Kevin Wilson, to chat about the event so far, racing yesterday
