Portland skipper Luke Donovan shows his winning style on the water at the Stawell Yacht Club regatta.
STAWELL - The Stawell Yacht Club held a successful regatta at the weekend, hosting sailors from other clubs in the south-west region of Yachting Victoria including Derrinallum, Warrnambool, Portland and also Corio.
The weather provided a range of conditions over the two days, with quite strong southerly winds on Saturday when three races were held, and drifter conditions for most of Sunday which resulted in the cancellation of the fifth and final race.
The racing was dominated by two very good skippers for much of the time, Mal McPherson from Corio club sailing his Impulse "All Shook Up" in the Monohull section, and Taipan sailor Luke Donovan from Portland aboard "Brute Force" in the catamarans.
Each of them notched up several wins, which earned them the aggregate trophy in their respective divisions.
Luke is a national and state titleholder and his class showed with some big winning margins.
Despite the strong opposition however, the few local skippers sailed well with Jan Ibs von Seht winning the third race (monohull division) in his Impulse "Germanater" and club treasurer Mark Knights scoring a first and a second placing (catamaran division) in his Taipan "Bite Me".
Regatta chairman George Grellet was very happy with the weekend.
"We could have handled a few more entries, but we still had good numbers of both monohulls and catamarans," he said.
"This is our first regatta in about 15 years, and we plan to build on this in the future, possibly by featuring a class as part of the overall event."
Visiting skippers expressed enthusiasm for the event and vowed to return, saying they very much enjoyed the picturesque mountain backdrop and the friendly and relaxed atmosphere.
Commodore Peter Knight praised the team effort by Stawell members and particularly the input of the Regatta Committee in running the event so smoothly.
He expressed thanks to the SES volunteers who generously helped out with their boat all weekend, and said the club also greatly appreciated the support of major sponsors Best's Wines and Lake Fyans Caravan Park.
Sponsorship assistance was also provided by Stawell Mitre 10, Winston Lodge, Toscana Olives and The Croft Winery.
As an aside, life member Lawrie Bennett and wife Roma didn't quite manage to get to the regatta on Friday evening as their car collided with a deer halfway to the lake and had to be towed away.
Fortunately they were uninjured.