(New South Wales, Australia)- Gotta hand it to our friends from Down Under. The boys from OZ clearly have a lot of fun sailing. And the Legends Regatta was no exception. Simon Grain has provided a tremendous follow-up to the coverage in the past week:
"The Legends Regatta was born out of an idea from Peter Stevens early last year and it was decided to run it in NSW due to the larger amount of boats and Legends residing there and last weekend saw the culmination of a massive amount of work to make this event happen.
The Gosford weekend was a huge success for the class and I want to thank the members of the NSW Association that put in such a huge effort to make this all happen. The result is a real credit to the vision and hard work of Terry Wise, Arthur Crothers and Paula Shires-Clarke who were the main drivers of this event, I know personally that Paula has lived and breathed this event for the last 6 months, working tirelessly to make it all a success. Many others were involved and I wish to thank them for their effort also especially Tim Briggs for his support in offering sponsorship and help with the legends venue. Thanks must go to all the sponsors small and large that offered their help with the regatta, with around $50,000 worth of sponsorship this surely rank as the most amazing event of recent times within the class and indeed within yachting in Australia. Thanks to Gosford Sailing Club for running the regatta and to Graeme Watt and his wife Margo who came from Melbourne to bring their considerable experience as international fleet race officers to run the racing. And finally a huge thank you to all the competitors and Legends who came and made this the most exciting J24 event in recent Australian sailing history.Sailing on the flat waters of Brisbane Water was a delight (being used to Port Phillip chop), but it was tough with varying wind strengths and directions and the hottest and largest ‘national’ fleet seen in Australia for many years. The quality of the fleet was impressive and I know that there were a few that found and the level and the workload difficult if not scary. It does however remind us that there are levels of sailing competition far above even this weekend – just ask anyone who has done a worlds!
I asked the race winners (and others) to comment on the NSW States and Legends Regatta for the benefit of those who didn’t go or were just wondering how they did it. Here are comments from them on their perspective." Go to this link and read on-- some great and really, really funny stories. Lotsa comments and every word is a gem. Especially Peter Steven's story of grit and determination to simply get there!
Read more about the J/24 Australian Legends sailing stories here.