Hundred-plus keelboat fleet for Cygnet Regatta

10:36 AM Fri 6 Mar 2009 GMT

'Cygnet Regatta 2008. Photo - Phil Jeff'

The Cygnet Regatta this weekend is celebrating the 145th anniversary of the first regatta held on the waters of Port Cygnet, with keelboat entries passing the century mark for the first time.

While not held every year since then, the regatta has undergone a major resurgence over the past decade and today claims to be the biggest keelboat regatta in Tasmania.

'About 11 years ago we decided the Cygnet Regatta needed reviving and we introduced a passage race from Kettering down the Channel to Cygnet,' Regatta secretary Phil Jeffs said today. 'We got 20 starters - this year the entries total 102 boats, ranging from offshore racing yachts to classic cruising ketches.'

The 2009 Cygnet Regattta starts from Hobart this evening with a 20 nautical mile race down the Derwent and into the d'Entrecasteaux Channel to Kettering with a fleet that includes wellknown Hobart racing yachts Archie, Asylum, Planet X and Hot Prospects.

'Tomorrow at noon we expect a fleet of more than a hundred boats to set sail from Kettering on a 40 nautical mile race further down the Channel to the Port Cygnet Sailing Club at Robley's Point,' Jeffs said, 'The fleet includes racing yachts, 'couta boats and a 45-foot Herreshoff gaff-rigged ketch.

'Sailing a 'couta boat will be Colin Swards from Kettering Yacht Club who has competing in the Cygnet Regatta back into the early 1950s and beyond,' Jeffs added.

After the two passage races the fleet on Sunday will contest a race around fixed marks on Port Cygnet, with spectators ashore assured of a close-up viewing of mark roundings off the clubhouse.

Port Cygnet Sailing Club itself was formed in 1979 on the shores at Robley's Point, with the first functions being in a tent and the first racing in dinghies. The area around the foreshore at that time was overgrown with blackberries and gorse and had a rocky foreshore. Over the years many truckloads of sand have been dumped and spread along what is now a beach,

In the 1980s only a handful of boats lay at anchor in the bay, now in 2009 there are more than 100 registered mornings. The club has 200 members and 150 boats on its register, including nine Pacer dinghies the club bought to train junior sailors.

Port Cygnet Sailing Club conducts racing on most Sunday from early October until the end of April each year. Twilights starts on the first Tuesday in January and runs for eight weeks.

by Peter Campbell

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