Many years ago, South of Perth Yacht Club was renown for having one of the hardest hitting and numerous fleets on the off shore calendar.
This was maintained right through until the late 90’s when the clubs on the ocean began upping the ante and providing fantastic pens and social structures to the off shore sailors. And rightly so…. Who wants to go under the bridges in the morning and back up the river after sailing and a good lunch at an ocean club?
However there are a few yachts that are carrying the can for SoPYC and while I will happily mention David Atkinson’s IGAWA a Farr 9.2, Pete Vlaar and his Farr 40 and John Holder on Liberty who campaign in the inshore during winter, the focus of this piece is to look at a bunch of guys on a boat called King Canute.
Formerly owned by Rob Halverson, this SS27 came back to SoPYC last year and has been happily swapping between the river on Wednesdays and the inshore racing and the Valmadres on every Saturday and has one more weekend to cover before the Valmadres season finishes. Doing it tough?
Yes and no. Matt Rose and the crew of King Canute have developed the ability to get the mast up and down easily and while they probably won’t win the golden egg at the end of the day, they are out there competing as are the other SoPYC boats. Don’t you wish we had more of these people out there?
Cheers
Rick Steuart
(Photographing the 2021 Valmadres)
