Two in a row for Ichi Ban 
  Cruising Yacht Club of Australia Commodore Matt Allen steered his modified Volvo Globe race sloop Ichi Ban to a line honours win in the 60th Brisbane to Gladstone Race over Easter. 
  The Ichi Ban crew who finished third in the Sydney Hobart race behind the super maxis Wild Oats and Leopard overcame light winds in Moreton Bay to eventually power away to claim her successive trophy win in Queensland’s premier coastal passage blue water classic. 
  Her crew including sailing master Michael Spies and Globe race navigator Will Oxley worked tirelessly during Good Friday night executing endless sail changes and gybes but fell well short of breaking the 20hrs24min50sec record set by the Grant Wharington skippered super maxi Skandia during stronger winds in 2004. 
  Skipper Matt Allen understood the record chase was shut down when Ichi Ban took almost four hours to complete the first 42nm in Moreton Bay. 
  “It became a case of playing catch-up from then but it was another enjoyable race for us in fact it was very comfortable with no breakages and apart from some light rain on our deck we were all fairly dry and warm,” Allen said. 
  Ichi Ban sailed to a clear-cut line honours win after an earlier match race with the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron sloop Spirit of Queensland before the former AAPT Grundig and former race record holder racing under her new owner Peter Harburg was forced to retire with mast damage. 
  “They [Spirit of Queensland] had good pace and they were on our hip sailing out of the Bay then it was all over,” Spies said. 
  This left Ichi Ban to extend her lead, powering away in a freshening spinnaker sailing breeze to finish with a comfortable 2hr 37min 10sec line honours win over Quantum Racing (Ray Roberts) while the Graeme Wood skippered TP52 Wot Yot was another hour and a half astern allowing the well sailed trio of CYCA Team sloops to equal their results of 2007. 
  Bill Wild’s impressively fast Hugh Welbourne-designed and Kevin Costin-built Wedgetail again demonstrated why she is regarded as Australia’s fastest 12.8m ocean racer when she claimed fourth place 43mins ahead of the match racing Jon Sayer-designed, water-ballasted sloops Ryujin FGI (Murray Bucknall) and Wasabi (Lucas Down). 
  However, while this was another impressive performance by the Ichi Ban crew their course time failed to match Quantum Racing, Wedgetail, and Wot Yot on corrected handicap. 
  Quantum Racing followed her third in the Rolex Sydney Hobart race by winning the historical 60-year-old Courier Mail Cup by 1hr 1min 15secs over Wedgetail while Wot Yot was another 54 seconds away third. 
  This result combined with the line honours trophy defence by Ichi Ban allowed the CYCA team of Quantum Racing, Wot Yot and Ichi Ban to win the Federation Cup teams trophy by a wide margin. 

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Test of the Best 
  No Australian sailor is prepared to make a pre-title prediction on the outcome of the Musto 2008 Australian Winter Championship to be decided off Mooloolaba from June 5-9. 
  The strict one-design nature of the class and the quality of the fleet representing New Zealand and all of Australia’s best fleet-racing combinations including America’s Cup champions, Olympic medallists and World title winners makes selecting an outright favourite impossible. 
  When class designer Elwood Widmer Etchells better known around the International yachting arena as E.W ‘Skip’ Etchells launched the prototype sloop 42 years ago he modestly suggested that the class would torment the tactical racing reputations of the world’s best including three time world champion Dennis Conner and Australian America’s Cup champion John Bertrand. 
  The Michigan University naval architecture graduate who also worked in the successful America’s Cup design loft of Sparkman and Stephens had a personal feel for one-design racing winning the Olympic Star class world championship in 1951 with his devoted wife Mary as crew. 
  Sadly ‘Skip Etchells’ sailed his final voyage in 1998, however, he has left a legacy with his sloop now established as the World’s best tactical racing clone class keel-boat. As expected all of Australia’s leading Etchells crews have accepted the Notice of Race for the Musto 2008 Australian Winter Championship over the demanding windward-leeward courses off Pt Cartwright in June. 
  The standard of tactical racing will be in world class with former dual world champion Cameron Miles nominated to test his respected one-design racing reputation against the trio of successful America’s Cup sailors John Bertrand (Victoria) Rob Brown (New South Wales) and the defending champion Michael ‘Skip’ Lissiman from West Australia. Miles won the prestigious Mooloolaba series Gold Medal in 2006 and added the 2007 Silver Medal to his impressive list of major championship results and has the respect to be listed among the title chances when the intense mind games in the aquatic version of chess begins. 
  Minor rule breaches always place the point score and title winning chances in damage control, as was seen in a dramatic post championship protest deciding the medallists last year after the young Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron skipper Jason Muir and his talented tactician Adrian Finglass outclassed the fleet on the water with Racer XY. 
  Unfortunately the Racer XY crew were technically found at fault in a breach of the port and starboard rule and were relegated from first to third. 
  “That was a difficult decision to accept at the time but that’s yacht racing,” Jason Muir said. 

Cuneo