Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race 2024

News
2017
Maserati third to cross the line

Maserati third to cross the line

NEWS
01 Aug, 2017 08:22:00 AM

Maserati ©Andrea Francolini

Maserati third to cross the line

Chasing the hundred footers and running ahead of the TP52 fleet it was a lonely race for Jim Cooney’s Volvo 70 Maserati who ended third in line honours.

Skippered by David Burt the team enjoyed a strong start but felt a bit of bad luck saw them drop back in the early hours of Monday.

Burt commented, “We’re stuck in the middle. We noticed that the TPs stuck together and then you have the hundreds up front so we were in no man’s land having to make all our own decisions!”

“It was a challenging race. It was a predominantly upwind which was a challenge for our boat. The first half we were really happy and hang on to the 100s with enough breeze to keep the boat moving. In the early hours of this morning we got caught up in a hole and that hurt us a bit, we lost a lot of time.”

“It’s not common for the race to be that consistently upwind and for the amount of wind you’d expect a quicker wind but generally it was a great race with good conditions.”

Despite having no boats around them for the majority of the race, the leading groups ended up taking a similar line which Burt worked both for and against his boat.

”We all played the same line, if you look at the guys up front and the TP52s, but it felt like we caught the racetrack at the wrong time. Maybe we could have gone a little closer to shore but being a Volvo 70 we don’t like tacking too much, maybe we went a little too far offshore but hard to say what was right or wrong.”

And what about the battle up front between Wild Oats XI and Black Jack? The Maserati team were keeping an eye on the battle through the charts.

“Really interesting to see Black Jack’s performance. We expected them to be in the mix at some stage but so early on, it’s really interesting.”