52nd Australian Flying Ant National Championship at Illawarra Yacht Club
by Adam Beashel 22 Jan 2019 14:12 GMT
18-21 January 2019
52nd Australian Flying Ant National Championships © Adam Beashel
The event was hosted and run by Illawarra YC on the waters of Lake Illawarra 1hr south of Sydney. A resurgence in numbers is being witnessed in the class as 24 boats competed, this is double the numbers been scene at the championships over the past 10 years.
Credit needs to be given to a number of dedicated class members and parents that has helped encourage and provide these eager kids with new and updated equipment to help give the class a more modern look and appeal. This hard work from these individuals and groups seems to be paying dividends now and there is now new boats being built and many kids asking parents to help get them the opportunity to get out and sail and race this exciting little "skiff".
It is no wonder the boats have appeal as they were first designed and built by the "Kiwi" John Spencer in the 1950's, back then they where first designed to provide kids aged eight to 15-years-old with a boat that would plane and skip across the water and give the kids a thrilling ride. Today they are still doing just that and with a new modern look they seem to showing up at more and more clubs and waterways around Australia and New Zealand and the social media pages are showing there is a strong demand coming to have many more boats purchased and sailed.
The Championships this season where held over four days from the 18th to the 21st January, four crews from Western Australia travelled over and one crew from Victoria came up to compete.
The first two days tested the kids skills with 15-25kt North Easterlies and Southerlies. There were many good spinnaker rides and spills to be witnessed providing some great viewing for the spectators.
The final two days where much calmer with 5-15kt easterlies on hand, this made for some close racing and the need for good tactics and smooth and slick boat handling around the marks needed to be at the pointy end of the fleet.
At the end of the four days racing the NSW crew of Joel Beashel and Logan Radford edged out there part time training partners Ryan and Brodie Ewings from NSW and then followed the WA team of Liam Vause and Daniel Bower in third place.
The Handicap overall awards went to the new first time Flying Ant sailors Philip Cripsey and Mason Mahoney from Victoria, these guys where thrown into the arena with only 2hrs ever spent in a Flying Ant on the afternoon of the day before the regatta, this win was also well deserved with them winning the final race of the regatta on Handicap by also finishing in second place on scratch in the final race. The runners up crew where local Illawarra sailors Jade Bower and Abby Clarke and 3rd place on handicap also to local sailors Elliot Winn and Noah Chenhall.
However as hoped the real winners where "ALL the kids", this was evident by the many new friendships made and many smiles and boat park stories of how fast they went on the reaches on the windy days and how big their wipeouts where that they survived.
Results can be found here
The Flying Ant class association is working very hard to continue the growth of the class and future regattas will be planned to allow many young kids the opportunities to come sail and race in this exciting little "skiff". The new boats are currently being built at Performance Sail Craft Australia. These boats can be purchased now and stock is being built up and new rigs are also being built by CST to provide a simple production boat for newcomers to the class.