A drifting easterly welcomed us on the lawn next to the junior clubhouse, but as the welcome coffee provided by the Commodore and the GM began to work its magic, the morning began to brighten up a little as did the breeze. A brief welcome and instructions from the RO Les Swinton and then the choice of boats by lottery with everyone seemingly contented with the boats they were given.

There has been a noticeable change in the crews on the Womens State Keelboat Championships with youth rearing up and asking to be noted. While there were some seasoned campaigners on the boats, there was a generous leavening of younger sailors across the teams and notably amongst the Royal Perth and Royal Freshwater Bay crews.

Half a dozen boats were ready to go with SoPYC putting 2 teams out on the water. A new club joined us on the water with Nedlands YC under Maddie Taylor as helm with a very wise soul Suzie as the knowledgeable person along side a relatively young team. Lucy Alderson was in charge of the Freshie crew and Carolyn Bush did a reprise of her earlier years with Fremantle as the helm for the club. Lilly MacAullay was running a young Royal Perth team and SoPYC had experienced campaigner Mara Vlaar in charge of one crew while naval officer Kirstin Norris flew in a week prior and worked hard to fit in to her team on the other SoPYC boat.

The first race kicked off around 0815 with the RO determined to use the breeze as best as he could. While Nedlands surprised everyone with a fine first leg, they fell away as the seasoned teams of FSC and RP capitalised on the shifts and got ahead to take the first race 1 and 2. The next race had Freshie doing well with Kirstin Norris taking second over the line and then the breeze began to track into the north with the RO watching the changes carefully. There was no way that going big time right was going to pay off. Play the game carefully and both Lily MacAullay and Kirstin ran home second and first in that order in the third race.

The fourth race (moving time) for both the crews and the top mark as the shift in the breeze was evident and some sort of order was beginning to form with Kirstin Norris taking her second win with Lucy Alderson from RFBYC taking second. The fifth race was already shortened up and it was a case of watching Maddie Taylor on the Nedlands boat take a win and have Carolyn Bush of FSC come along to sweep up the second place.

The sixth race, well it was 10 minutes of midday and RO Les shortened up again and gave them a one lap dash. It was anyone’s to lose, but Mara of SoPYC pulled out all the stops and took the win with Lucy from RFBYC taking a good second. The results were interesting with one drop allowed and RFBYC (Lucy) and SoPYC (Kirstin) equal after drops, but the two firsts to Kirstin and her team had done the trick and in a very tightly fought light wind morning SoPYC took the trophy home.

A word of appreciation to Cliff Lawrence and Ian Stewart who again were prepared to loan the ladies teams their Foundation 36’s for training. Just quietly and in the background, they are supporting their club.

Many thanks to the volunteers of SoPYC with, the on water teams making it easy to get people moving around out onto the water and back off it. Well done to the organisation and work by Ethan Preto-Low of Swan River Sailing and my appreciation to umpire Richard Goldsmith who was prepared to take me around on the water.  But the best was the early morning coffee presented by the general manager Mike Sassella and Commodore Troy with a fine finish to the morning on the quarterdeck with results, sparkles and a bit of tucker.

A good day out.

Rick Steuart