Alfa Romeo had started the prestigious Hamilton Island Hahn Premium Race Week with a stunning record-breaking line and IRC handicap victory in a gentle 13-knot tropical sea breeze and today the 30-metre super maxi finished the series today with another brilliant double victory on a wet and windy day, with a 26 knot wind, gusting to 30 knots, and short steep seas in the Whitsunday Passage off the coast of Queensland.

Alfa Romeo sailed the South Molle/Daydream Islands Race in a remarkable 1 hour 51 minutes and 1 second, hitting 29.6 knots downwind under a Code 3 spinnaker and averaging 11.7 knots to windward. The big boat carried full mainsail throughout the race and a No 4 headsail to windward. However, her time will not stand as a record as the start for today's race was a couple of miles shorter that the scheduled 23 nautical miles for the IRC class with the starting line set in open waters clear of the narrow Dent Island Passage.

"We had no problems whatsoever today, we are extremely happy how she went in her first regatta," owner/skipper Neville Crichton said as he watched from Alfa Romeo, berthed alongside the marina, as the next boat, Wild Oats, finished 21 minutes astern. "We really came up here to test the boat in the usual light to moderate trade winds of the Whitsundays and we have twice had 25 knots and more. 

"It's been a great test of everything, the hull, the rig and sails and the highly complex systems that come with a canting keel, dual rudders and hydraulic systems," Crichton added. "There is a lot more that we can get out of the boatwe logged 29.6 knots downwind and that was without using our water ballast, which we did not rate in for this regatta."

The Reichel/Pugh designed carbon fibre super maxi, which features CBTF (canting ballast twin foils), took line honours, as expected, in all nine races and won four on IRC corrected time. She would have won the IRC overall series but for breaking two battens and retiring from the second last race. As a result of that retirement and a 24th on correct time in the flukey winds of the long Edward Island Race earlier in the week, Alfa Romeo has ended up third in provisional overall standings for the IRC class. 

On corrected time in today's South Molle/Daydream Island Race, Alfa Romeo won by 3 minutes 26 seconds from the Irish-owned Cookson 50, Chieftain, skippered by Gerard O'Rourke, with third place going to Vanguard, Dick Cawse's 60-footer from Sydney, designed by himself and Australian naval architect David Lyons.
 

As an indicator of the potential of the world's newest and fastest super maxi, the previous 90-foot LOA Alfa Romeo took line honours in every race she contested in the Northern Hemisphere and did not win one race on handicap. The new 98-footer has already won four races on handicap in nine starts, getting the gun in each race.

The super maxi's scorecard for Race Week read: 1-24-1-2-3-1-1-dnf-1 for a total of 34 points which placed her provisionally third overall in the strong IRC class. Hamilton Island Resort owner Bob Oatley's Wild Oats won the series despite finishing 8th today after bowman Tim Wiseman was washed of the "prod" (bowsprit). Wiseman was releasing the tack of the spinnaker after the halyard broke, dumping the kite in the water. Fellow crewmembers had him back aboard quickly and Wild Oats recovered well to finish second around the course. "However, we lost about ten minutes," helmsman Mark Richards said later.

With the 25-30 knot south-easterly trade wind kicking up a short steep sea in the Whitsunday Passage,  there many spectacular gyrations as yacht's broached and 'chinese' gybed out of control on the long spinnaker run to Daydream Island. Several spinnakers exploded in the gusts, leaving boats with just a mast top 'flag'.

One Sydney 38 class yacht broke its steering, another yacht ran aground on a coral outcrop before the start of the IRC class, while a crew member of Allusive, a boat in the Cruising Yachts class, was airlifted to hospital by helicopter after being put ashore at Daydream Island. He apparently was hit on the head by the boom during a wild gybe.

Hamilton Island Hahn Premium Race Week 2005 - provisional final results: 1st Wild Oats, Reichel/Pugh 66, CBTF (Bob Oatley, AUS), 4-11-2-1-1-2-2-1-21, 21 points. 2nd Wild Joe, Reichel/Pugh 60, CBTF (Steven David, AUS), 3-6-3-3-2-3-4-3-4-5, 27.5 points. 3rd Alfa Romeo, Reichel/Pugh 98, CBTF (Neville Crichton, NZL), 1-24-1-2-3-1-1-DNF-1, 34 points. 4th Loki, Reichel/Pugh 60 (Stephen Ainsworth, AUS) 2-4-4-4-5-4-6-5-6, 34 points. 5th Chieftain, Cookson 50 (Gerard O'Rourke, IRE) 7-12-5-6-10-8-3-2-2, 43 points. 6th Hollywood Boulevard, DK46 (Ray Roberts, AUS) 8-7-7-5-9-7-5-9-11, 57 points.