Kiwi sloop dominates Day 1 racing at MMABRW
 Living Doll (foreground)_Std.jpg)
'Wired (background) Living Doll (foreground)-Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week 2008'
Peter Campbell ©
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New Zealand's power sailing sloop Wired was intelligently sailed in testing light winds to score a comfortable line honours win in the opening race of the Meridien Marinas Airlie Beach Race Week earlier today.
Wired skippered by experienced Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron long distance sailor Rob Bassett simply proved too fast even when the soft south westerly land breeze fell way to a 2 knot drifter near the first rounding mark.
They seemed to have a strong feel for each variable wind change to break away when her spinnaker was the first to fill with a more moderate wind.
'It was a nice feel to slip away with 14 knots of boat speed in a breeze of similar strength' Bassett said.
This became the turning point in the race when Wired sealed control of the line honours.
Skipper Bassett and the Wired crew were rewarded with being patient drifting through the calm before sprinting across a surprisingly smooth Whitsunday Passage leaving New Zealand team mate Pussy Galore (Anatole Masfen) to apply a wind shadow over their Australian rivals in a close duel for the minor places.
Wired cleared Double Cone Islands with a race winning lead however they needed to apply a consistent speed to build up time to outsail their maximum 1.401 time correction factor.
They appeared to be in good shape on the windward beat to finish off Airlie Beach.
The slick sailing New Zealand sloop improved her margin on the slog against the wind eventually winning line honours with a 12 minutes 16 second advantage over Pussy Galore with the Sydney sloop Quantum Racing (Ray Roberts) filling third place another 27 seconds off the pace.
'We have made some alterations which has improved our all angle sailing speed' a happy Rob Bassett said.
He had good reason to be happy with his line honours result but Wired failed to win the more important handicap when Melbourne skipper Chris Dare and tactician Roger Hickman combined to complete the course with a 43 second faster corrected handicap while Wired and Michael Hiatt's Living Doll filled the minor places.
by Ian Grant 
Curl Curl, NSW
