Musto Etchells Aust Winter Championship countdown
'The best in one-design winter racing as the Etchells contest 12th annual Mooloolaba Musto Winters - Musto 2008 Etchells Australian Winter Championship'
Peter
Duncan www.Questphoto.net
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A record fleet of 54 Etchells has entered the Musto 2008 Australian Winter Championship, which begins with two races off Mooloolaba tomorrow.
The lineup includes teams from Japan and New Zealand as well from far-flung Australian fleets in Western Australia and Northern Territory as well as from Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
The fleet also includes an impressive array of talent, including America's Cup veterans.
John Bertrand, who steered Australia II to its America's Cup win nearly 25 years ago and for some years has been a regular Etchells competitor on Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay, is back in the Mooloolaba regatta for the sixth time.
Besides his long-time regular Ernie Lawrence, he has in his crew Adam Beashel, who was a strategist for Emirates Team New Zealand in last year's America's Cup. Adam is the younger brother of Colin Beashel, the Star class Olympian, who was mainsheet trimmer for Bertrand in the 1983 Cup win.
Also from the Australia II crew is last year's winner Skip Lissiman from Perth, back to defend his title, crewed by his younger brother Lloyd, Fiona Campbell and Mike Tyquin.
The Lissiman team is one of ten in the fleet electing to sail with four lightweights instead of the usually preferred three large crew members.
Another is the current Australian champion crew: Jason Muir, Matthew Chew, Darren Jones and Paul Wyatt from Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron.
They will be keen to erase the bitter memory of the disqualification in last year's winter championship, which cost them the championship.
That championship was the first in the event's ten-year history that did not allow a boat to drop its worst placing in the six-race series. Muir's Racer XY was disqualified on the protest of another competitor for a port-and-starboard right of way rule breach, which dropped Racer XY from first on the scoreboard to third, behind Lissiman and the regatta's 2006 winner and former world champion Cameron Miles from the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club's Pittwater fleet.
For this year's regatta the organising authority, the International Etchells Class Association Mooloolaba Fleet, has reverted to allowing a boat to drop its worst performance, providing five races of the six-race series are completed.
The coastal waters forecast indicates that conditions for the first two races tomorrow could be tricky: SW to NW 5-10 knots with afternoon sea breezes.
by Bob Ross 
Curl Curl, NSW
