Festival of Sails 2012 Cruising Series run and won

12:41 PM Sat 28 Jan 2012 GMT

'Festival Of Sails 2012, Royal Geelong Yacht Club, Geelong (AUS), Club Marine Cruising Series Twilight Race' Teri Dodds/ Festival of Sails &copy

At the Festival of Sails 2012 the Club Marine Cruising Series has been run and won and tonight the placegetters are kicking back enjoying the accolades before tomorrow morning's official trophy presentation.

Not all Festival of Sails competitors are free to relax tonight however, with at least half the divisions back in the ring tomorrow for their final bout.

Arch Burn's Kel Steinmann one-off, Galaxy was the Division A spinnaker division winner and it's the third divisional win at Geelong for Burns and the aluminium-framed timber boat he built over a decade, from 1980 to 1990, in the back of an old Shell Service Station on the corner of Dandenong and Chappell St. in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs.

'I'm a little amazed,' Burns admitted tonight when congratulated on his win while enjoying a well-timed, pre-planned crew dinner. 'The crew did their job, and did it well'.

Rick Pacey's Northshore 38, Salty Dog, was the Cruising Series Division B winner in the boat's first Festival of Sails hit-out.

'We've nibbled around the edges with other boats so this is a very satisfying result, particularly as we only picked up the new boat in the middle of last year,' said Pacey this evening.

'Today's race to Portarlington restarted three times. At one point we were up with the Division A boats, then the Division C boats rolled onto us. It was quite incredible,' Pacey added.

Mats Gamby's S & S 39, Millennium Falcon, outclassed its Division C contemporaries, beating Geoff Adams' Beneteau First 31, Unami, and Stuart Morrison-Jack's Wright Copyright.

In the Cruising non-spinnaker division, top honours went to Alex Hall's Northshore 34, Saltwhistle, from Sandringham Yacht Club. Grant Dunoon's Trybooking.com finished second three points adrift of the leading pointscorer and John Chipp's Beneteau 34, Johnny B. Goode.

Michael Williams' SS design, Martini, from the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, was the best sailed among entries in the James Boags Classic Yacht Series, the division that turns heads on Corio Bay and evokes plenty of emotion among the sentimental as these grand old dames parade among the modern fleet.

Festival of Sails website

by Lisa Ratcliff

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Festival of Sails 2012 Cruising Series run and won

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