Adams 10m class dominated by Eat My Shorts

2:51 AM Fri 30 Jan 2009 GMT

'Adams 10 fleet' Robyn Yeomans

This year's Adams 10m Nationals was all about Eat My Shorts, skippered by Chris Villa.

Held at Lake Macquarie the local boat cleaned up the fleet of 16. With some of the closest racing seen for a while the competitive fleet included eleven making the trip up from Sydney Harbour.

Eat My Shorts however was the star of the show figuring in the placing of each race. This was their first win having placed on previous occasions. Saturdays racing was held in a hot Westerly, whilst the remainder of the event was held in a good sailing southeaster. Star performer on Sunday however was MHYCs 2004 and 2006 winner Another Dilemma [Tim Gallego], taking the honours in two of the three races.

Australia Day proved to be a great day to be on the water with Eat My Shorts sporting a large Australian flag from their backstay throughout the last race. This seemed to have no adverse effect on their performance winning a close race by seven seconds.

Series runner up, Backchat [Adrian Roche] also from LMYC was consistent throughout the racing. Last year's winner Ben Nossiter's (MHYC) Sirius couldn't find the form from last year and finished fourth.

Throughout the weekend racing was close with the top ten not being decided until the conclusion of the last race. With only one General Recall during the entire series and no protests, this made for enjoyable racing.

The Pat Carroll Memorial Trophy for first timber seater (Mark I boats) was won by Melissa Yeomans onboard Animus (MHYC) for the second year running. There were four boats competing for this trophy commissioned in the memory of Class Stalwart Pat Carroll. Animus which is 30 years old and One, Craig Douglas, proved that these boats can still be competitive in most conditions.