Launceston to Hobart - Secret Weapon in duel for line honours

8:29 PM Sun 20 Dec 2009 GMT

'Yacht owners Geoff White and Gary Smith give a final sanding to the bulb of their Bakewell-White 45, The Fork in the Road, before setting sail for Beauty Point at the weekend for the Sargisons Launceston to Hobart race.' Peter Campbell &copy

Hobart yacht owners Gary Smith and Geoff White will have a 'secret weapon' aboard their 45-footer, re-named The Fork in the Road, in a bid to outsail rival owner Andrew Hunn in his 40-footer Mr Kite in the race for line honours in next weekend's Sargisons Launceston to Hobart Race.

Stung by their loss to Mr Kite over the final few nautical miles of the recent Maria Island Race, Smith and White have bought a huge Code 0 reaching headsail for their boat, previously known as Marineline/Focal.

The 285 nautical mile Launceston to Hobart (L2H) Race starts from Beauty Point on the Tamar River at 1pm next Sunday, 27 December, with a record fleet of 34 yachts lining up for this third annual race through Bass Strait and down the Tasmanian East Coast to the River Derwent.

'Mr Kite beat us in the Maria Island Race when they hoisted their Code 0 off the 'Garrow' in the Derwent, and we decided not be caught out again in light reaching conditions, ' Smith, a former world champion and Olympic sailor, said before setting sail for the Tamar River this weekend.

The two yachts are again expected to duel for line honours in the L2H, with The Fork in the Road defending her line honours win last year.

Smith and White launched their Bakewell-White 45 at the start of the last sailing season after spending five and six years and 16,000 hours in building the yacht in the old Hobart steel works in the Hobart industrial suburb of Derwent Park.

'Apart from the New Zealand design, and even then there was a Tasmanian input, the yacht is a real Tasmanian effort - the e-glass/balsa/composite hull, bulb keel, aluminium mast and sails are all made here in this State,' Smith said proudly. 'The deck fittings, sheets, paint are all sold in my chandlery shop.'

In addition to some former Sharpie sailing mates of Gary's, many of the crew of 14 have had a significant input into the yacht, including sailmaker Steve Walker from Wynyard and Alex Nolan who worked for Bakewell-White when the
plans for the yacht were being drawn up in New Zealand.

'We will have a choice of five different helmsman during the race, myself, Steve Walker, Tony Shearman, Scott Sutton and Steve Walker, with Scott also the navigator/tactician,' Smith said.

'If the weather provides predominantly downwind conditions, Mr Kite will be hard to beat, but we will go well to windward and we will also have a better chance of a rating (handicap) win,' he added.

Of the 34 entrants for the Sargisons Launceston to Hobart Race, all but five are from southern clubs.

by Peter Campbell

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Launceston to Hobart - Secret Weapon in duel for line honours

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