| ARLIE BEACH, QLD-(16-8-2002) Veteran Australian ocean racing yachtsman Lou Abrahams celebrated his 75th birthday last Saturday by winning the opening race of the Australian championship for the Sydney 38 One Design class, sailed off tropical Airlie Beach in North Queensland.
Yesterday, he clinched back-to-back victories with his boat, Another Challenge, fighting back to place fourth in the final race and retain the National title by just one point.
Despite serious illness, Abrahams sailed Another Challenge more than 1500 nautical miles north up the Australian East Coast from Sandringham Yacht Club in Melbourne to Airlie Beach to defend the championship title he won here last year.
Tomorrow Another Challenge will contest the big Hahn Premium Race Week at nearby Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays Islands before Lou and his boat will return south to prepare for the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race – the 40th time he has sailed in the rugged ocean race.
That will place him equal with the famous navigator Richard “Sightie” Hammond, but still behind the race record-holder, Tasmanian John Bennetto, who has sailed in 41 Hobarts.
However, Abrahams holds the record for the most races sailed in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race as an owner/skipper – 36 in total – and has twice been the Overall Winner on corrected time.
This week, in the tightly-fought Sydney 38 Australian championship, he notched up a consistent score of 1-2-6-2-2-1-2-4 to beat a fleet of 21 boats from four Australian States, New Zealand and Singapore. The first race margin was just 10 seconds or one point and that was the final winning margin.
Race Week at Hamilton Island, the annual late-winter mecca for sailors from the southern States of Australia and even chillier New Zealand, has attracted a near record total of 179 entries including boats and crews from Hong Kong, Singapore, the USA and the Philippines.
A highlight will be the racing debut of Shockwave, the state-of-the-art 90-footer water-ballasted, carbon fibre super maxi designed by Reichel/Pugh for Sydney-based luxury car importer and international yachtsman Neville Crichton.
Also sailing in its first races will another Reichel/Pugh, Wild Oats, a radical 60-footer with a canting keel and twin rudders fore and aft, designed by Australian wine industry leader Bob Oatley.
Race Week is the start of Shockwave’s preparations for the 2002 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, for which she is already a hot favourite for line honours.
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