New-look 18-footers Open The 100th Season

The Sun Herald

Saturday September 14, 1991

Bob Ross

TWO newly designed boats - the first since the NSW 18-Footers Sailing Club(the League) froze development in 1988 to reduce costs and arrest an alarming decline in fleet numbers - are among entries for the opening handicap race of the Sydney Flying Squadron's 100th season next Saturday.

They are Prudential (Rob Brown) and Fuji Xerox (Phil Barnett), both built by Marke Thorpe and Richard Stanning at Mona Vale to a design by former world and Australian champion Brown and Iain Murray.

Brown said he spent two months on the computer with Murray, refining designs of the past.

"It's a really small boat," he said. "It will be very easily driven in the top end of the wind range and, with our concentration on the hull shape, will not suffer in the light and moderate wind ranges. It's minimum in every dimension."

The Sydney Flying Squadron has 13 entries for next Saturday's race. It will be followed by a reunion for former sailors and supporters at its clubhouse in Careening Cove marking the centenary of the club's foundation.

On Sunday the 18ft Skiff Association, which last year broke away from the League and began racing from Woollahra Sailing Club after the League refused for unspecified reasons the entry of the previous Prudential with Brown as skipper, will open its season at Woollahra, with seven entries.

Besides Prudential and Xerox, they are Bank of New Zealand (Scott Ramsden), Ella Bache (Adrienne Cahalan), Prima (David Lamond), Skilled Engineering(Andrew Divola) and Cruising Rangoon Restaurant (Tom Rutherford).

Bank of New Zealand, an earlier Murray design, has had weight-removing surgery and new rigs.

The same seven boats have entered for the national circuit, initiated last season by promotions and management group Grand Prix Sailing, with regattas scheduled for Townsville (October 5-6), Adelaide (October 26-27), Melbourne(November 16-17), Sydney (December 4-5) and Perth (January 18-19).

From each event, Grand Prix Sailing will produce TV programs to be screened on the Nine Network during the lunch breaks of the Australia v India Test cricket.

The League will open its Sunday racing season on October 6 with an expected fleet of 15 boats still racing under its "frozen" design, construction and rig rules.

Absent from Saturdays and the GPS national circuit, which he won last year, will be Julian Bethwaite.

He has gone over to the 16-footers and taken his sponsor with him. He will sail a new AAMI-sponsored Gary Phillips design with the Manly 16ft Skiff Club on Saturdays and a B18, under different sponsorship, with the League on Sundays.

The chairman of the 18ft Skiff Association, Adam South, says the new rules were framed for the B18s which needed a bow modification.