Strong line-up for Crown Series 2009 - Bellerive Regatta

10:42 AM Mon 16 Feb 2009 GMT

'2007 Bellerive Regatta - Silicon Ship full and free' Jane Austin

Bruny Island Race winner Sally Rattle in her Archambault 35 Archie heads an impressive line-up of nearly 100 keelboats entered for next weekend's Crown Series Bellerive Regatta 2009 on Hobart River Derwent.

Tasmanian keelboat, dinghy and skiff sailors have again strongly supported the event, now ranked among the top four annual sailing regattas in Australia, with a full program of racing over the weekend of February 20-22.

The widely popular regatta, hosted by Bellerive Yacht Club in conjunction with Lindisfarne Sailing Club on Hobart's eastern shore, gets under way with a casual, non-spinnaker twilight keelboat race on the Friday evening, 20 February, followed by full-on racing for yachts and dinghies on Saturday and Sunday.

Joining Sally Rattle with Archie in Division 1 will be Bruny Island line honours winner Marineline, the Bakewell-White 45 skippered by former Olympic sailor Gary Smith, along with Richard Fader's Farr 40 POW, Jeff Cordell's Host Plus Executive, Harold Clark's highly competitive Invincible and David Creese's Creese Property.

Also lining up in the fleet of 20 Division boats will be Don Calvert's Intrigue and David Taylor's Pisces which last Saturday figured in a unique dead-heat on IRC ratings in the Summer Pennant distance race conducted by Derwent Sailing Squadron.

Division 2 has already attracted 23 entries, including Justin Barr's Rumbeat and Michael Denney's Wild West, both of which filled major placings in the PHS division of the Bruny Island Race.

The Dinghy entries include strong fleets of NS14s, B14s, Sabots and Sabres, with a late intake of entries expected later this week.

The B14s, which recently held their Australian and World Championships on the Derwent, will be real crowd pleasers when these scaled-down versions of Sydney 18-footers race off Victoria's Victoria Esplanade over the weekend.