The Classic Yacht Association's annual Patio Bay Race saw tricky conditions after the start with a breeze yet to fill in. Forecast to come from the north it never arose, and instead filled in from the west giving those with running kites a chance to stretch their legs. Some great sights off Awawaroa with RAWHITI and ARIKI having a ding dong battle.

These boats have an inherent integrity because they are are shaped by the vernacular of their allotted challenging task. Even as the pilot cutters of Western England (or the Couta boats of Port Phillip) have become pleasure craft, they have carried with them an honesty of design that is missing from boats shaped purely by the need for speed, or more recently, three double cabins and two heads.

“Eet’s the end of summer,” said the taxi driver, en route from the airport to Barcelona, partly because he’d just learned to say it on Duolingo, but mostly because of the heavy rain and great bolts of fork lightning in the sky above the Catalonian capital.

How do you quantify the feeling of six 40 plus ft craft, meters apart, with a combined age of 400 years, storming close-hauled through the Port Phillip chop towards a start line?

Imagine This. You are standing amongst some of Australia’ most important wooden vessels, smelling the huon pine, admiring the gracious curves and soaking up the history. You have a glass of Tahbilk Ambassador Shiraz 2020 in one hand and a bespoke snag from Lygon Street’s greatest butcher in the other.

While witnessing these wonderful displays of classic yachts outperforming lighter modern boats with their longer waterlines, “something simply just does not ring true!” How can these classics win off scratch in mixed fleets, often against ‘significantly faster’ boats of more ‘flighty’ proportions and high tech construction and yet be considered slow and outdated.

Consequently, winning races became a challenge to outsmart the rule maker as much as to produce a better boat. Unfair shapes with rule cheating ‘rating’ lumps and bumps, poor stability, structural failures and handling issues became the norm, as the design challenge was to find the fastest sailing configuration which would ‘appear slowest’ under the version of the rule applying at the time. 

After being revitalised in 2023, The Cup Regatta, organised by the Classic Yacht Association of Australia, is now looking to expand its reach, with a goal of having 50+ boats racing on the waters of Port Phillip on the first weekend of November.

“…Of all the many anachronisms at the modern Olympics, sailing is perhaps the most conspicuous of all: a continuing sop to super-rich men who founded the Games and still just really love yachts, basically inaccessible to most of the countries in the world, even the ones with a viable coastline.”

It’s been a while coming but I’m finally realising Regatta’s are not necessarily about the glamorous and high-end boats they are about the people you meet and race against on the way through.

Built as a shallow-draft yacht, WHOOPER was mostly cruised, but her natural reaching and downwind speed exceeded expectations. Anecdotes from Peter Bruce recall crossings back from the Channel Islands in the 1960’s, at average speeds over 10 knots!

Reality check No.1: this is on an island that is a public reserve administered and maintained by the taxpayer-funded National Parks and Wildlife Service. Anyone has a right to be there.

The annual Mahurangi Regatta is back to its former glory after a few years of setbacks. Enjoy the imagery here!

The Couta Boat Association has posted a wonderful record of the early years of the Class on its website. There are about 50 Editions of “SCOOP” on line, starting 42 years ago in 1981 and ending in 2011.

This is going to be special! Drinks and food and friends amongst some remarkable restorations. There will be a welcome to the Regatta and brief description of the vessels being worked on in the shed.

So now I’m a little confused!  There are so many good things going on, so many positive stories and no shortage of activity, so why we are not brimming with optimism?

We have a seriously diverse, storied and decorated fleet of wooden boats coming to Williamstown on the weekend of 3rd 4th 5th November… A couple of Admiral’s Cup winners, a Newport Bermuda race overall winner, a three of circumnavigators, Victoria’s most successful keelboat, Sayonara Cup challengers and a plethora of Sydney Hobart contestants.

“I was still in school in ’83 and was on the dock during the Trials in 1977 when Ted Turner and Gary Jobson rushed by with cameras following them,” said Courageous Skipper Dawn Riley, who would go on to sail in four America’s Cup races and two Whitbread Round the World races. “It made a big impression on a 13-year-old from Detroit!”

The boats themselves are the sculptures…. but sometimes too much “trickery” shouts “look at me, the clever photographer” rather than look at this image and understand a little of what it is like to witness this awe-inspiring sight.

Ed is tough but considered, practical but romantic, exacting but inclusive. If more people were like him, sailing would be a better sport.